There is no mystery about the origin of many of the table-top skittles varieties discussed on this page - they are miniaturised forms of the larger pub game of Alley Skittles or Nine Pins. For more information on the origins and history of Skittles, please see the Skittles page. In England, Alley Skittles itself splintered into a number of regional variations and, since a skittles alley takes up a large amount of valuable floor space in a pub, in some areas varieties that did not require alleys at all appeared. Most of these amounted to table-top, miniaturised versions of the alley game and several games of this type are still well-known and popular today in pubs across the land.
Bar Skittles
The best known table-top skittles game is known as Bar Skittles or Pole Skittles or just Table Skittles. It has also been known as Devil Amongst the Tailors, although I believe this was due to a mistake. This distinctive version of the game was cleverly
miniaturised so that no throwing area is required at all - the nine pins standing on a square
plinth are knocked down by a ball which is swung around a pole, instead. For this classic pub game, please see the dedicated Bar Skittles page.
Northamptonshire Skittles and other Skittle Table Variants
The Godfather of all smaller skittle games and, in many people's opinion, the best pub game in existence, is Northamptonshire Skittles. For more information, please see the dedicated page on Northamptonshire Skittles and other skittle table games.
Miniature Toy Skittles
For centuries, across the whole of Europe, straightforward miniaturised forms of skittles have been made for the table-top, usually as toys for children. Such skittles at the higher-end, made for aristocratic families, are extremely ornate and beautiful creations, almost too good for playing. The problem with all skittles at this scale is that they don't tend to play well. Often the skittles don't topple satisfactorily or are too thin to easily knock over their adjacent pins but, more importantly, pins and balls at such a size are fiddly and difficult to handle. A full-size skittle ball or skittle cheese fits solidly into the hand and throwing or rolling it down an alley is a fulfilling act in its own right. A skittles marble has to be held between finger and thumb or flicked, so the tactile enjoyment in the act of propelling the ball is all but lost. At the other end of the game, when a miniature balls hits miniature pins, the action is over in a trice, even on successful throws that topple most of the pins. By contrast, larger pins tend to spin and roll around making a spectacle that is worth watching as the balls make their way through the pin diamond. Like many games made for the home market, most miniature skittles are a triumph of form over substance that do not hold the attention of their intended market for very long.
The picture shows an ornate miniature set of ivory pins and ball together with their pear-shaped ivory container. Unfortunately missing two of the pins. By kind permission of Richard Ballam.
Other slightly improved classes of toy skittle game have existed at various times that involve purpose-made structures forming an alley, often in wood with side boundaries to contain the balls and pins. Sometimes the problem of propelling the ball in a satisfactory way is dealt with using some kind of device that both launches it and contains a mechanism that gives the player control over its direction. A multi-games table exists in the German Museum of history, dating 1760 - 1780, in which a ball is propelled with a leaf spring, in a similar manner to a Pinball machine. It then travels almost completely around the perimeter of the table before being turned to shoot up the middle of the table, at nine pins at the far end. The table is beautfully made from multiple expensive timbers but this game is pretty dull, as there is no aiming mechanism! The skittles, though, feature what must be the earliest example of a 'Skittle Cord Return' - which still works today. For more information on Skittle returns, see the Bar Skittles page.
John Jaques produced 'Enfield Skittles' in 1870, a cue sport version of nine pins, in which players struck a billiard ball up a table much like Nine Cup Bagatelle, at nine small pins towards the other end.
One form of this type of game involves the ball descending on a ramp along the length of the game which then does a U-turn and sends the ball rolling back along the 'alley' towards the skittles. This pastime seemed to appear briefly towards the end of the nineteenth century, being made by a few competing manufacturers. The Burroughs and Watts version was called Switchback Skittles; another version existed called 'Boccan Parlour Skittles'. In his book on pub games published 1975, Timothy Finn reported one of these contraptions was once in The King's Arms Inn, Portesham, Dorset, called a 'Dorset Table', but it certainly wasn't a pub game.
By kind permission of Gardiner Houlgate auctions, shown is an example of 'Switchback Skittles', made by Burroughs and Watts.
Table à Toupie or Toptafel or Devil Amongst the Tailors
I was first contacted about this game from Americans who wrote to say they were trying to find a
supplier of the it. It has been handed down the generations in North America for more than a
century. The game consists of a several small rooms laid out on a board - designs vary somewhat.
Skittles are positioned amongst the rooms and a top is then sent spinning from one end of the table
in an effort to topple as many of the skittles as possible. Each skittle scores (or sometimes
deducts) differing numbers of points and success is largely a matter of luck.
It's apparent that a great deal of
uncertainty reigns, not least as to precisely what the game should be called. In the USA, it is
somewhat confusingly known simply as "Skittles" - this is presumably because Americans don't tend to play the
original game of Skittles or Nine Pins - only ten pin bowling, skittles' direct ancestor. One person
wrote to say that the game was called "Racketeer" while another wrote to say that he was attempting
to restore an old game believed to be French from around 1850 and that the English owner from whom
it had been bought referred to it as 'Devil amongst the Tinkers' (incorrectly - it should be 'Tailors' - see below) . The game is alive and still popular in France, Belgium and Holland. In France it's known as "Table
A Toupie" (literally Table with Top) although one vendor also refers
to it as "Jeu de Roi" (Game of Kings) and in The Netherlands it's called "Toptafel".
The game was played in Britain, too, for a while, but there is little sign of it from the latter half of the nineteenth century. Joseph Strutt in 'Sports and Pastimes of the People of England', published 1801, disparagingly mentions a version of it played with nine small pins set placed "like skittles" within a circular board. "This silly game" he wrote, is played in "low public houses where many idle people resort and play for beer and trifling stakes of money". Strutt calls the game 'Devil amongst the Tailors' and it appears that in 1783, some theatre-goers
and tailors rioted at the Theatre Royal,
Haymarket over a play entitled “The Tailors: A Tragedy for Warm Weather“ that the clothes-making professionals thought was insulting. The Dragoons were called in to stop the
riot which they did in such an enthusiastic way that their method was compared to a spinning top ploughing through skittles by the local press. Note: any reference to 'Devil amongst the Tinkers' is almost certainly based on a proliferated mistake. Furthermore, use of the name 'Devil Amongst the Tailors' for the game of Bar Skittles / Pole Skittles is probably also based on an erroneous confusion of that game with this, since Strutt shows us that the name was first used for the spinning top game.
Lest there be any further doubt about this, an article entitled "Village Inn Games" in a 1931 edition of the West Sussex Gazette written by one W. J. Stubbins goes as follows: "I remember when I was a boy, back in the 'eighties, and used to visit a friend at the Selsey Arms, West Dean, near Chichester, wehn the late Mr. Jim Pannell was landlord, seeing there a game in progress called "The devil among the tailors." It was played with a wooden board, in shape similar to a large banjo, with miniature nine-pins. A piece of string was wound round one ninepin, which was painted black and called the "devil." like the way boys wind their tops, before spinning; the string was then pulled, and the "devil" made to travel up the board rapidly, the player's idea being to knock down as many as possible of the miniature ninepins. It was a rather fascinating game to watch, and called for no little skill, and I recollect it caused a lot of amusement, the landlord himself being an adept.
While the game now seems to be most popular in the United States, it seems likely to have originated in France and it's possible to find extremely ornate and luxuriously made tables from as far back as the eighteenth century. The game appears to have been played first by European aristocracy. An amazing collection of such tables is owned by 'Cyril M' near Paris.
This video shows some of Cyril M's Table a Toupies in action.
In Aug 2001, an auction house wrote with a picture of an exquisite gaming table featuring a
wealth of different games. The table is from France during the reign of Charles X, dated
approximately 1820. One of the games (shown on the right) was the most beautiful Table a Toupie game
with multiple intricate brass fitments and little bells to ring as well as skittles to topple. It is
a piece that would have certainly originally belonged to French nobility.
Rules
Description and rules for Bar Skittles, Northamptonshire Skittles and other skittle varieties are available for free from Masters Traditional Games
Pubs
Please see the Bar Skittles Pubs & Leagues