Gaming Pieces — When Playing At Teetotum

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games - 1560 

In Pieter Breugel's 1560 painting, Children's Games, wherever you may look there are vignettes of children playing the sorts of games that children played in the mid-16th Century.  In the top left of the picture beneath the arches of a building, are a group of girls whipping spinning tops with lengths of cord attached to the ends of sticks and they are doing this in order to keep them spinning just as long as possible. 

In the bottom left of the scene, there's a little girl holding up a spinning top — however, this kind of top had a different purpose. This type was designed to be held by its tip and spun through the torque provided by a sharp snap between thumb and forefinger, would spin only as long as this energy lasted, and would eventually slow down, wobble around the point of its spindle, and then topple on its side.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games - 1560 (detail)

Her spinning top is actually a gaming piece for a 'put-and-take' game — a 'teetotum'. It has four sides each of which would have been marked with a character and each of these was a command. Whichever facet of the cube was face up when spinning finally stopped and the top fell, then that character told what you must do next ...

By sheer good fortune, I once found such a top laying upon the Thames Foreshore which because of its form and the style of its engraved characters may indeed be of similar date to the Bruegel painting. It is made of ivory (stained a mahogany-brown colour during long burial) and each of its four faces is engraved with a single character ~ 

Excuse my mucky fingers! The brass teetotum cleaned up well despite its heavy encrustations. 

The teetotum is supposed to have originated in Ancient Rome (though I cannot find a picture of a surviving example) when the characters were the following and had these Latin meanings  ~

A. Accipe unum [take from the pool] 

D. Donato alium [add to the pool] 

N. Nihil [nothing] 

T. Totum [take the whole pool].

My post-medieval example with the characters A-H-N-P had similar meanings ~

A. Take all

H. Take half

N. Take nothing

P.  Put stake

There are later depictions of such tops and the example spinning around on the table in Chardin's 'Boy with a Top' 1738, also looks similar in style to the Thames example and is probably also a teetotum ...

Jean Siméon Chardin, Boy with a Spinning-Top or Child with a Teetotum — 1738 

It appears that the toy and its eponymous game enjoys periods when it becomes something of a craze. This was so during the 18th Century when 'teetotum' was a popular parlour game that had even the family of King George III hooked ...

Lord Mulgrave delivering important news to the King observed ~

“Their majesties were playing at teetotum for the enormous stake of some pins. His majesty received his lordship with his accustomed affability, and said, “You see I am at last turned gambler, but I hope I have too much sense to risk a crown upon the throw of a dice.”

As you can see, at this time there was a distinction between the teetotum, with which you might play for pins — and dice, with which you might play for hard cash. However, whilst playing a harmless game of chance with his wife and children the king freely admits that when 'playing at teetotum' — gambling is what it is and gambler is what he becomes — and quips that he only hopes that he'll never take the (political?) risk of losing his 'crown' by it. 

The Early 20th Century brass example found at Polly's Parlour last week is hexagonal and carries six commands ~

1. Take all

2. Take two

3. Put one

4. All put

5. Take one

6. Put two

The teetotum enjoyed another period of popularity during those times.  Although it appears that the device was still widely regarded then as a toy fit for children's play, in America, where the playing of 'put and take' again reached craze proportions, the teetotum was soon outlawed in many states and for good reason ... 

Soon, it was also deemed a fit tool for proper gambling — and of course, when that becomes the case, then cheats and swindlers will set to work. The picture below is of two gentlemen playing for what is clearly cash money. However, this picture also explains that the top could be ingeniously made to weight outcomes in one's favour, or indeed in another's disfavour with a crafty push or pull of the spindle ...  

And so I have a second teetotum in my collection and from a site that appears to have been a popular local venue in Edwardian times. Exactly what this place was popular for is unclear at the moment but the evidence continues to accumulate, however, I cannot seem to find any direct evidence of the presence of womenfolk. Unless I count the pair of toy deer as the evidence of girls at play then everything found at Polly's Parlour thus far shouts only 'men and boys' at play.

But playing at what and playing for what, exactly?