Note 417 — Chapter VI · VILLAGE FESTIVALS

Tw. N. i. 3. 42 ‘He’s a coward and a coystrill, that will not drink to my niece till his brains turn o’ the toe like a parish-top.’ Steevens says ‘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 is evidently a ‘fake’ of the ‘Puck of commentators.’ Hone, E. D. B. i. 199, says ‘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.’ The ‘burial of Alleluia’ is shown later on to be a mediaeval perversion of an agricultural rite. On the whole question of tops, see Haddon, 255; A. B. Gomme, s. v.