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. In the Fifteen Comforts of Marriage, p. 143, we read: “Another tells ’em of a project he has to make town tops spin without an eel-skin, as if he bore malice to the school-boys.” Poor Robin, in his Almanack for 1677, tells us, in the Fanatick’s Chronology, it was then “1804 years since the first invention of town-tops.” These passages seem to refer to a custom of keeping tops by a township or parish, and they are confirmed by Evelyn, who, speaking of the uses of willow wood, among other things made of it, mentions great “town-topps” (_Sylva_, xx. 29). The latest writers who give positive information on the subject are Blackstone, who, in his note on Shakespeare, asserts that to “sleep like a town top” was proverbial, and Hazlitt, who, in his collection of _English Proverbs_, has “like a parish-top.” (See also Brand, ii. 448.) Steevens, in his notes on Shakespeare, makes the positive assertion 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.” This passage is repeated in Ellis’s edition of Brand, so that there is only one authority for the two statements. The question is whether Steevens was stating his own independent knowledge, or whether he based his information upon the passage in Shakespeare which he was illustrating. I think there can be no doubt that the custom existed, in whatever way we accept Steevens’ statement, and the question is one of considerable interest. “Tops” is one of those games which are strictly limited to particular seasons of the year, and any infringement of those seasons is strictly tabooed by the boys. Hone (_Every Day Book_, i. 127), records the following rhyme:— Tops are in, spin ’em agin; Tops are out, smuggin’ about,