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TOPS 299 |
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provided with a knotted handkerchief, with which he buffets any one caught on his property :—
Here we are on Tom Tinder's ground,
Picking up gold and silver;
You pick weeds, and I'll pick seeds,
And we'll all pick carraway comfits. In the Liverpool district the game is called "Old Daddy Bunchey " (Mrs. Harley), and in Norfolk " Pussey's Ground " (Miss Matthews).
It is also mentioned by Lowsley (Berkshire Glossary).
Tops
The special games now played with tops are mentioned under their respective titles, but the general allusions to the ancient whipping-tops are important enough to note.
Strutt says the top was known with us as early at least as the fourteenth century, when its form was the same as now, and the manner of using it can admit of but little if any difference. Representations of boys whipping tops occur in the marginal paintings of the MSS. written at this period; and in a work of the thirteenth century, " Le Miracle de Saint Loys," the whipping top (Sabot) is mentioned. The top was probably in use as a toy long before. Strutt records the following anecdote of Prince Henry, son of James I., which he met with in a MS. at the Museum, the author of which speaks of it as perfectly genuine. His words are—"The first tyme that he, the prince, went to the towne of Sterling to meete the king, seeing a little without the gate of the towne a stack of corne in proportion not unlike to a topp wherewith he used to play; he said to some that were with him, 'Loe there is a goodly topp;' whereupon one of them saying, 'Why doe you not play with it, then ?' he answered, ' Set you it up for me, and I will play with it.'"—Sports) p. 385.
Northbroke, in his Treatise against Dicing, 1579, p. 86, says : " Cato giveth counsell to all youth, saying, ' Troche* lude, aleas fuge,playe with the toppe, and flee dice-playing.'"
In the English translation of Levinus Lemnius, 1658, p. 369: " Young youth do merrily exercise themselves in |
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