soul was peacefully soaring in the calm heavens, far removed from mundane risks.

Problems such as these, which are suggested by the comparative study of toys, have in themselves those very dangers which beset the kites themselves. The string which binds them to the solid earth may snap, and they may be lost in the clouds, or they may fall, as it were, lifeless to the ground.

CHAPTER IX.

TOYS AND GAMES: TOPS AND THE TUG-OF-WAR.

TOPS.

E have seen that the kite has been introduced

Winto Europe from Eastern Asia, but Schlegel

believes the reciprocity has not been all on one side, as, according to him, the West has repaid in the top its debt to the East for the kite.

There are many kinds of tops, but they can be resolved into a few groups :-the whipping-top; the top turned by a string wound round the upper end as in the humming-top, in which case there is usually a detachable handle, or by the string enwrapping the lower end as in the usual peg-tops; and lastly the top, or teetotum, spun by being twisted by the hands or fingers.

Every spring tops appear in our streets with the regularity of the seasonal revivals of Dame Nature. herself.

"Tops are in, spin 'em agin;

Tops are out, smuggin' about,"

cried the ragamuffins in Hone's time* and so they still do. The last phrase has reference to an unwritten * W. HONE, The Every-Day Book, i., 1824 (February 15), p. 253.

code of boy-life, that confiscation ("smugging") of toys is allowable when they are "out."

*

Nares has collected several references which show that tops were at one time owned by the parish or town. In Twelfth Night we read, "He's a coward | and coystril, that will not drink to my niece, till his brains turn o' the toe like the parish top."

Beaumont and Fletcher refer more than once to this strange civic toy :

"I'll hazard

My life upon it, that a boy of twelve

Should scourge him hither like a parish top,

And make him dance before you." ‡

"And dances like a town-top, and reels and hobbles." §

Sir W. Blackstone asserts also, that to sleep like a town-top," was proverbial. Stevens, in his Notes on Shakespeare, states that "this is one of the customs now laid aside: a large top was formerly kept in every village, to be whipt in frosty weather, that the peasants might be kept warm by exercise and out of mischief while they could not work." It is very improbable that this is the real signification of the curious custom of having a village top. Judging from what we know of other instances of village recreations, it is probable that there is * R. NARES, Glossary, "Parish Top."

+ SHAKESPEARE, Twelfth Night, Act i., Scene 3.

BEAUMONT And Fletcher, Thierry and Theod., Act ii., Scene 4. § Ibid., Night Walker, Act i., Scene 4.

something behind this which has not yet been elucidated.

66

Hone* refers to a top being used in the ritual of the burial of Alleluia in one of the churches in Paris. 'According to a story (whether true or false) in one of the churches of Paris, a choir boy used to whip a top marked with Alleluia, written in gold. letters, from one end of the choir to the other." This does not seem to be very likely, but strange customs often persist to an unexpected and almost inexplicable extent, and, if it be true, we may find in this and analogous customs some clues which may throw light upon the town tops.

The whipping-top has an ancient pedigree in Europe. In a work of the thirteenth century, Le Miracle de Sainct-Loys, the whipping-top (sabot) is mentioned; † and it is figured in the marginal paintings of English MSS. of the fourteenth century. ‡

Pliny refers to a top identical with the modern one, and specimens of such tops have been recovered from the ruins of Pompeii, and are still exhibited in the museum of Naples. There are, as a matter of fact, several allusions in Latin and Greek authors to the whipping-top. The whipping-top is mentioned in an old MS. dating to about 500 B.C. A stranger of

* W. HONE, The Every-Day Book, i., 1824 (February 2), p. 199.

+ F. DILLAYE, Les Jeux de la Jeunesse, Paris, 1885, p. 191.

‡ J. STRUTT, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1801, Book iv., Chap. iv., p. 288.

S

Atarne consulted Pittacus of Mitylene, one of the Seven Sages of Greece (651-569 B.C.), concerning a wife. The question was whether he should take a certain girl in his own rank of life who had a fortune equal to his own, or a damsel of higher status and with more money. The sage told him to go to a group of boys who were playing at whipping-tops in the midst of a wide cross-road. As he approached them he heard one of the boys say to his fellow, "Whip the nearest one," and he accepted this as aņ oracle.

The oldest record is the discovery of Dr. Schliemann of terra-cotta tops in the so-called Third City of Troy, and at the present day the boys of Asia Minor still spin tops with whips.

When the traveller, Palgrave, was at Riadh, the capital of Wahabees in Central Arabia, he saw a boy spin a top on his left hand, he then took it on the forefinger of his right hand, which he held at full length above his head, and repeated the following formula :

"Not by my strength, nor cleverness, but by the strength of God and by the cleverness of God."

The whipping-top is known in the far East. Stewart Culin* in his beautifully illustrated work on Korean Games gives a plate of a couple of boys

* STEWART CULIN, Korean Games: with Notes on the corresponding Games of China and Japan, Philadelphia, 1895.