“Otia nunc istic: junctisque ex ordine ludis
Cedunt verbosi garrula bella fori.
Usus equi nunc est, levibus nunc luditur armis:
Nunc pila, nunc celeri volvitur orbe trochus.”
Passing from these general allusions to the top as a form of amusement, we enter on more significant ground when we take into consideration the various passages in the early dramatists and other writers (collected together in Nares’ Glossary), which show that tops were at one time owned by the parish or village.
“He’s a coward and a coystril that will not drink to my niece, till his brains turn like a parish-top.”—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, i. 3.
“A merry Greek, and cants in Latin comely,
Spins like the parish-top.”
—Ben Jonson, New Inn, ii. 5.
“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.”
—Beaumont and Fletcher, Thierry and Theod., ii. 1.
“And dances like a town top, and reels and hobbles.”
—Ibid., Night Walker, i. 1.
Every night I dream I am a town-top, and that I am whipt up and down with the scourge stick of love.—“Grim, the Collier of Croydon,” ap. Dodsley, xi. 206.