"Tambourine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of various houses, glimpses were to be caught of the blue caps, strongly marked countenances, and fierce mustaches of the Carlist soldiers; their strangely-sounding Basque oaths and ejaculations mingling with the clack of the castanets and monotonous thrum of the tambourine, as they followed the sunburnt peasant girls through the mazes of the Zorcico, and other national dances. Hanging over the window-sills, or suspended from nails in the wall, were the belts, which the soldiers had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... the market place to-day I found such a bored old bear dancing for a bored crowd. I've never seen anything quite so tired and patient as his eyes. His little old master was half asleep but he whacked his tambourine and whined his mournful song without a pause. I left Lupe and the C.E. and went out and patted the bear and asked the man (I am as handy as that with my Spanish!) how much he earned in a day. Less than fifteen cents in our money! Well, I asked him ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... chamber, and putting a tambourine into the cauzee's hands, led him out and began to play a merry tune upon her lute, to which the affrighted magistrate danced with a thousand antics and grimaces like an old baboon, beating time with the tambourine, to the great delight of the husband, who every now and then jeeringly cried ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... himself, in dancing, with castanets. Corinne before she began saluted the assembly most gracefully with both her hands, then turning round upon her heel took the tambourine which the Prince Amalfi presented her with. She then began to dance, striking the air upon the tambourine, and there was in all her motions, an agility, a grace, a mixture of modesty and voluptuousness, which might give an idea of that power which the Bayadores exercise over the imagination ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... thus aggregated and organized become an efficient spiritual energy; and the higher the organism the grander the power that is developed, man being the most perfect organization evolves the grandest spiritual power, as a superior violin evolves finer music than a tambourine. But the intelligence and will of man are only phenomena, like the music, and have no existence beyond that of the organism that produces them. This is substantially the theory of materialists generally, and of the old school medical colleges which consider human ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... It would be no more absurd to give an idiot a tambourine and call him a musician—he would be an idiot all the same. So with the clerk, the laborer, the hod-carrier, the teacher; he remains the same in spite of all the polished arms, resplendent uniforms, and pompous titles bestowed upon him. He remains ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... when every thing was cleared away for the dance. A large fire was lighted in the centre of the room, for the purpose of giving, at the same time, light and warmth. The music was partly vocal and partly instrumental. The instruments consisted chiefly of a sort of tambourine, formed of skin stretched across a hoop; and a small skin bag with pebbles in it. The women then came forward, highly decorated: some with poles in their hands, on which were hung the scalps of their enemies; ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... misleading or nonsensical words and yet intend and convey the truth. The methods of the Salvation Army are older than doctrinal Christianity, and may long survive it. Men and women may still chant of Beulah Land and cry out in the ecstasy of salvation; the tambourine, that modern revival of the thrilling Alexandrine sistrum, may still stir dull nerves to a first apprehension of powers and a call beyond the immediate material compulsion of life, when the creeds of Christianity are as dead as the lore of ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... the Esquimos are few. Tests of strength and endurance occur between the men of the tribe; and visits are paid to the various settlements, during the long winter nights; and songs and choruses are sung, accompanied by a kind of tambourine which is made from the bladder of a walrus or seal, and stretched across the antlers of ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... stare, but continued to gaze at the archway as if expecting some one. Young, robust, her very attitude suggested absolute health; yet her expression was so despairing, her eyes so charged with misery, that involuntarily he felt in his pocket for money. And then he saw that in her hand she held a tambourine. She wore a faded uniform ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... falls to the lot of a country community. Old black Ebenezer—but whose name had also been cut down for convenience sake to Sam, by the old Captain—did the orchestral duties upon his fiddle, which, aided by a youngster on the triangle and another on the tambourine, formed quite "a full band" for the occasion, and dancing ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... voluminous white silk dress and a black mantilla pirouettes in the middle of a dusky room, to the accompaniment of her own castanets and that of a row of men and women who sit in straw chairs against the whitewashed wall and thrum upon guitar and tambourine or lift other castanets into the air. She appears almost colossal, and the twisted and inflated folds of her long dress increase her volume. She simpers, in profile, with a long chin, while she slants ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... an entertainment got up for him in the harem. There were great illuminations, singing, music with tambourine accompaniment and the danse du ventre. Amongst those present was General de Caraman, who commanded the artillery. He was seized with cholera just as he was going away, and was dead by six o'clock the next morning. Such is life! Several adventures arose ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... think was the tune they danced to? "The drunken Sailor"—sometimes "Jim Crow," Tails in the way—and some got pinched, too, 'Cause they were too long. What do you think they had for a fiddle? An old Banjo with a hole in the middle, A Tambourine made out of a riddle, And that's the ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... hand out of the current; but I did not dare to interfere with it, and I continued to hold on to the jelly. Whoever was being materialized was doing it so slowly, and without any kind of system, that we hardly had the patience to sit it out. Then a tambourine walked up some one's arm, Prince Nassau's spectacles were pulled off his august nose by invisible hands (of course, who else would have dared?), thus making him more near-sighted than ever. His wife's necklace of turquoises was unclasped from her ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... rowing, the excited hum of voices, the violent commotion of the water, passed by us with an impetuosity that took my breath away. They had started in a bunch. There must have been amongst them at least one crew of negroes, because somebody was beating a tambourine smartly, and the rowers chorused in a quick, panting undertone, "Ho, ho, talibambo.... Ho, ho, talibambo." One of the boats silhouetted herself for an instant, a row of heads swaying back and forth, towered over astern by a full-length figure as straight ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... provided for Jack's amusement when ashore (U.T. 5) consisted of a fiddle and tambourine; while at dances the instruments were fiddles and harps. It was the harps that first aroused Mr. Jingle's curiosity, as he met them being carried up the staircase of The Bull at Rochester, while, shortly after, the tuning of both harps and fiddles inspired Mr. Tupman with a strong ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... expecting to appeal with success to the educated people of the present day, while still declining to move with the course of thought of the people. Already the braying of a trombone out of tune, and the barbarous jingle of a tambourine, had absorbed some hundred thousand of possible church-goers; and though, of course, it was impossible for sensible men and women—the people whom the Church should endeavor to grapple to its soul with hooks of steel—to look, except ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... people upon the platform descended into the body of the hall, and the lights were turned very low. The audience sat in suspense, and then abruptly in the silence and the darkness there came the rattle of a tambourine from the empty platform. Rappings and knockings seemed to flicker round the panels of the hall, and in the place where the door of the cabinet should be there appeared a splash of misty whiteness. The whiteness shaped ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... music supplies, From his hurdy-gurdy the waltz is sublime; His fair daughter Rosa, whose tambourine flies, Is merrily thumping the rollicking time; The Widow McCann pats the tune with her slipper, The peanut-man hums as he peers from his stall, And Officer Quinn for a moment looks in To see the new ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... play the fiddle and the harp used to be going about with Cahil-a-Corba, that was a tambourine man. But they got tired of one another and parted, and Carolan went to the house of the King of Mayo, and he stopped there, and the King asked him to stop for his lifetime. There came a grand visitor one time, and when he heard Carolan singing and ...
— The Kiltartan History Book • Lady I. A. Gregory
... like to relate here that one of his seemingly gross but really innocent diversions was occasionally visiting a certain black house of prostitution, of which there were many in St. Louis. Here while he played a flute and some one else a tambourine or small drum, he would have two or three of the inmates dance in some weird savage way that took one instanter to the wilds of Central Africa. There was, so far as I know, no payment of any kind made in connection with this. He was a friend, in some crude, artistic or barbaric way. He ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... cronies, had started celebrating even since last evening; had caroused the whole night through and now had carried their noisy merrymaking out to the market. The hired musicians—two fiddles, a first and a second, and a tambourine—were strumming a monotonous but a lively, bold, daring and cunning tune. Some of the wives were clinking glasses and kissing each other, pouring vodka over one another; others poured it out into glasses and over the tables; others still, clapping their palms in time with the music, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the round table in the centre of the room, on which lay a tambourine and a little green box. Lagune developed unsuspected lengths of knobby wrist and finger directing his guests to their seats. Lewisham was to sit next to him, between him and the Medium; beyond the Medium sat Smithers with Miss Heydinger on the other side of him, linked to Lagune by the typewriter. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... the criticism with easy indifference, and her fair, dissipated face was only twisted in a grimace, while she held one hand aloft and jingled the bangles on her bracelets as though poising a tambourine. ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and with joined hands, and veiled head, and eyes meekly cast down, bends to receive the golden coronet he is about to place on her brow. The Dove is omitted, but eight seraphim, with rainbow-tinted wings, hover above her head. On the right, a most graceful angel strikes the tambourine; on the left, another, equally graceful, sounds the viol; and, amidst a flood of light, hosts of celestial and rejoicing spirits ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... dancing, contorting her body in the small circle of light formed by a flickering lanthorn which was hung across the street from house to house, striking the muddy pavement with her shoeless feet, all to the sound of a be-ribboned tambourine which she struck now and again with her small, grimy hand. From time to time she paused, held out the tambourine at arm's length, and went the round of the spectators, asking for alms. But at her approach the ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... time I got half of my lozens broken, by their knocking one another's heads through, I was obliged to get quit of them at last, by selling them to a man and his son, that kept dancing dogs, Pan's pipes, and a tambourine; and that made a livelihood by tumbling on a carpet in the middle of the street, the one playing "Carle now the King's come," as the other whummled head over heels, and then jumped up into the air, cutting ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... his indignation lent such force to the gesture with which he put on his hat that the impact sounded like a blow on a tambourine. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... were a few things.... O this is wonderful." He waved a clenched fist about his head. "The finest people, Tel! You never saw such people, Tel. They gave me a tambourine. Here it is; wait a minute." He placed the bag he carried on his shoulder on top of a milestone and untied its mouth. When he pulled the tambourine out it was full of figs. "Look, pocket these. I taught her ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... should I see get out of it, but the gipsy girl! She was dressed up, this time, to the eyes, togged out in golden ribbons—a spangled gown, blue shoes, all spangled too, flowers and gold lace all over her. In her hand she carried a tambourine. With her there were two other gipsy women, one young and one old. They always have one old woman who goes with them, and then an old man with a guitar, a gipsy too, to play alone, and also for their dances. You must know these gipsy girls are often sent for to private ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... avowed and professed that you stood on a footing of friendship and guest-friendship with him; though these were nothing but your hireling-service under other names; for upon what honest or equal basis could Aeschines, the son of Glaucothea the tambourine— player,[n] enjoy the guest-friendship, or the friendship, or the acquaintance of Philip? I cannot see. In fact, you had been hired by him to ruin the interests of these your countrymen. And yet, though your own treason has been so plainly detected—though you have been an informer against ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... to be found among the reckless and jolly fellows composing a man-of-war's crew. A big landsman from Utica, and a dare-devil topman from Cape Cod, are the leading vocalists; Symmes, the ship's cook, plays an excellent violin; and the commodore's steward is not to be surpassed upon the tambourine. A little black fellow, whose sobriquet is Othello, manages the castanets, and there is a tolerable flute played by one of the afterguard. The concerts usually commence with sentimental songs, such as "Home, sweet Home," and the Canadian Boat Song: but the comic ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... ladies, on the contrary, he was all "effusion," as the French say, dashing off his hat as if he metaphorically flung it at their feet for a gage d'amour, not of battle—just like an Ethiopian minstrel striking the gay tambourine on his knee in a sudden flight of enthusiasm. All in all, Horner was essentially a ladies' man, his points lying in that way; and, although what is popularly known as "harmless," he was not by any means a bad sort of fellow on the whole, when judged by ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and the dishes cleared, an amateur luti from among the villagers produces a tambourine and castanets, and, taking the middle of the room, proceeds to amuse the company by singing extempore love songs in praise of the bride and groom to tambourine accompaniment and pendulous swayings of the body. Pretending to be carried away by the melodiousness ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... often a pretty sight when several of these boats are moored together, when, their day's work over, their crews will gather round the fires, and to the accompaniment of tambourine or drum sing songs or recite stories until it is time to sleep. No sleeping accommodation is provided, and all the hardy boatman does is to wrap his cloak about his head and lie among whatever portion of the cargo is least hard and offers ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... gay and sad, by turns, she was a good little worshipper, but given to harmless pranks withal. Between the long church services, if she went into the country with girls of her own age, she made no fuss about doing as they did, but would sing and dance away and flourish her tambourine. But such days were few. Most times her chief delight was to climb up to the top of the house, to bring herself nearer heaven, to obtain a glimpse of daylight, to look out, perhaps, on some small strip of sea, or some pointed peak in the vast wilderness of hills. Thenceforth ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... wild-west show of my own in the London Hippodrome. I came back to America deeper in sin than ever. One day I was sitting in a saloon planning a fresh escapade when a Salvation Army sister came in with her tambourine and some 'War Cries.' She looked at me and said, 'Are you a Christian?' I said, 'No.' She gave me the address of the Headquarters and asked me to come up. The bar-tender turned round and said, 'Go up and rope somebody.' I said, 'I will go up.' There was something different ...
— The Personal Touch • J. Wilbur Chapman
... four Masters Tortoise Shell, whose names were Bobstay, Rattle, Clipper, and Dick, came into the room with great white collars and black faces, and began to sing like the Ethiopian Serenaders. Bobstay played the Fiddle, Rattle the Bones, Clipper the Banjo, and Dick the Tambourine, when they sang "Old Dan Tucker," and "Kafoozlum." The four Misses White almost fell off their seats with laughing, and Sir Claude was seen to put the tail of his coat into his mouth; Captain Black didn't like it ...
— A Apple Pie and Other Nursery Tales • Unknown
... foot was raised, with an energetic, broken song, which, dying away, was again and again sounded—"hay-a, hay-a, hay-a," they went, laying the emphasis on the first syllable. A drum, similar to, though larger than a tambourine, covered with parfleche,[46] was beaten upon with a stick, producing with the voices ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the letter slowly changed under the influence of more advanced moral ideas. This is true of the sacred feasts attended by the initiates. One of the few liturgic formulas antiquity has left us refers to these Phrygian banquets. One hymn says: "I have eaten from the tambourine, I have drunk from the cymbal, I have become a mystic of Attis." The banquet, which is found in several Oriental religions, was sometimes simply the {69} external sign indicating that the votaries of the same divinity ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... must apparently have meant the Bhunjia tribe of Raipur, who as already stated are an offshoot of the Baigas. Colonel Dalton describes the dances of the Bhuiyas of Chota Nagpur as follows: [372] "The men have each a wide kind of tambourine. They march round in a circle, beating these and singing a very simple melody in a minor key on four notes. The women dance opposite to them with their heads covered and bodies much inclined, touching each other ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... sight of a minstrel first part. "Gentlemen, be seated." The opening chorus was not half over before Alfred was laughing as heartily as ever boy laughed. The antics of the fellow with the tambourine who hit the singer sitting next to him on the head with it in time with the pattering of the sheepskin on his knees, hands and head, the assumed anger of the singer as he again hit him a resounding thwack, the ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... bound to render an annual tribute to the king of the Matabele in the shape of four black oxen and one dance. A missionary has seen and described the deity discharging the latter part of his duty in front of the royal hut. For three mortal hours, without a break, to the banging of a tambourine, the click of castanettes, and the drone of a monotonous song, the swarthy god engaged in a frenzied dance, crouching on his hams like a tailor, sweating like a pig, and bounding about with an agility which testified to the strength and elasticity ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... kind of tambourine, ornamented with fan-like feathers, in the lodge. Fair Cloud used to play upon it, or rather shake it in a rhythmic way. There was also a war-drum in the lodge, and an Indian called Blackhoof used to beat ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... must 'a' et something poison. I was awful sick. I guess it was ten days or so before I come to enough to know where I was. I've had hard luck, bo—I'll say I have. I was robbed while I was sick, and only for a tambourine queen I got acquainted with, I guess I'd 'a' died. They're treacherous as hell, though. Long as she thought I had money—oh, well, they's no use expecting kindness in this world. Or gratitude. I'm always ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... argue yes, I know what men say that a man, by the mere audacity of his request, must have some good in him. A weak man doesn't say: "Give me this and that." He whines: "Why haven't I been given this and that?" If you were in the Army, I should say learn to spin plates or play a tambourine with your toes. As it is ask! You belong to a Service that ought to be able to command the Channel Fleet, or set a leg at twenty minutes' notice, and yet you hesitate over asking to escape from a squashy green district where you admit you are not master. Drop ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... they found had with him a little Italian girl with a red silk handkerchief knotted about her head. She sang and played on a tambourine, and Gabriel persuaded his companion to watch and ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... never allowed a candle to light me to bed, and, as I went up stairs in the dark, with my head tingling,—from Mrs. Joe's thimble having played the tambourine upon it, to accompany her last words,—I felt fearfully sensible of the great convenience that the hulks were handy for me. I was clearly on my way there. I had begun by asking questions, and I was going ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... What a spectacle awaited him!.... Amid bottles, pastries, scattered cushions, tambourine, guitar, and hookah, Baia stood, without her blue jacket or her corslet, dressed only in a silver gauze blouse and big pink pantaloons, singing "Marco la belle" with a naval officer's hat tipped over one ear... while on a rug at her feet surfeited with love ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... off his coat, took off his cuffs and vest, and thus half undressed he joyously danced about, beating a tambourine. Then he removed his shirt, trousers, shoes, garters and socks. Lighting his candle he walked to his bed, blew out the candle and went ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... said to herself, smiling and nodding at the fire. 'Tommo will like to have me go with him and sing, while he plays his harp in the streets. I know many songs, and may get money if I am not frightened; for people throw pennies to other little girls who only play the tambourine. Yes, I will try; and then, if I do well, the little ones shall ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... and careless of the future. After keeping up their noisy confabulation for some time, they removed to a level spot close to where I was lying: one of them squatted down on the ground, and commenced singing to the music of a sort of tambourine, that he beat with the flat of his hand; and the others at once formed a circle, and commenced a rude dance, which had probably been brought by themselves or their fathers from the shores of Eastern ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... gipsy maiden within the forest green, There was a gipsy maiden who shook a tambourine. The stars of night had not the face, The woodland wind had not the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... the drums and cymbals, that resulted from the falling of granules of lead, contained in an invisible box provided with an automatic sliding-valve, upon an inclined tambourine, whence they rebounded against little cymbals in the interior of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... time. He and the fifty-five dollars vanished into the street. In his haste he bumped into a Salvation Army lassie with a tambourine. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... I lay listening to the voice of the ex-soldier, a voice reminiscent of a distant tambourine, and to Vasili's pensive questions, I conceived a liking for the men, and began to detect that in their relations there was dawning something good and human. At the same time, the effect of some of Vasili's dicta on Russia was to arouse ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... but a real good idea of improving on the handcart. What if he didn't make a whole band out of himself, with a harness holding a comb across his mouth, and a bass drum for him to kick with one foot and a tambourine to frisk with the other. My, when he started off with "The Stars and Stripes Forever" you might have thought he was six, with a drum major prancing along in front! He give a demonstration that night in the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the whole of Europe:—"The Duke of Milan ordered a rope to be stretched across his palace, about one hundred and fifty feet from the ground, and of equal length. On to this a Portuguese mounted, walked straight along, going backwards and forwards, and dancing to the sound of the tambourine. He also hung from the rope with his head downwards, and went through all sorts of tricks. The ladies who were looking on could not help hiding their eyes in their handkerchiefs, from fear lest they should see him overbalance and fall and kill himself." ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... infancy - only with this difference, that he is a worse subject than my mother, if possible. What did he do before he went? What do you say;' Mr. Bounderby, with his hat in his hand, gave a beat upon the crown at every little division of his sentences, as if it were a tambourine; 'to his being seen - night after night - watching the Bank? - to his lurking about there - after dark? - To its striking Mrs. Sparsit - that he could be lurking for no good - To her calling Bitzer's attention to him, and their both taking notice of him - And to ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... not to be allured by flattery or drawn by entreaty back amongst them; she set her delicate pearly teeth tight, and vowed with a reckless, contemptuous, impetuous oath that she was tired; that she was sick of them; that she was no strolling player to caper for them with a tambourine; and with that declaration made her way out alone into the little open court under the stars, so cool, so still after the heat, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the music-hall patriot; "the brave fellows who lie there have died a glorious death, and the glory is ours as their fellow-countrymen"; and he drops a tear and a shilling into the particular tambourine which happens at the moment to be raising the loudest clamour, and honestly believes himself to have achieved ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... coach, who have been listening open-mouthed to the siren, and shillings and half-crowns, and a bit of gold from the one last out of the Bench, pour into it; and she moves off, to make way for three French glee-maidens with a monkey and a tambourine, and the swells return to their cigars and their betting, and we are all attention for the next event on the card, because it is a gentlemen-riders' race; and the performances will consequently be as different as possible from ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... that Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and other great departed whose names are taken in vain every day by small-bore politicians, do not return and whack these persons over the heads with a tambourine, is almost—as Anatole France remarked in an essay on Flaubert—is almost an argument against ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... more correctly, tambourine, so common among most of the Polar peoples, European, Asiatic, and American, among the Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Tunguses, and the Eskimo (see drawing on p. 24), is found in every Chukch tent. A certain superstition ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... now developing a curious and unexpected facility and talent in the musical games. She played the tambourine, the triangle, the drum, as nobody else could, and in accompanying the marches she invented all sorts of unusual beats and accents. It grew to be the natural thing to give her difficult parts in the little dramas of child ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... her hour! His eyes rested idly on a little old coloured print of a Bacchante, with flowing green scarf, shaking a tambourine at a naked Cupid, who with a baby bow and arrow in his hands, was gazing up at her. He turned it over; on the back was written in a pointed, scriggly hand, "To my little friend.—E. H." Fiorsen drew smoke deep ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Andalusia you have the zambomba, a flower-pot perforated by a hollow reed, which, wetted and rubbed with the finger, gives out a hollow, scraping, monotonous sound. In Southern Andalusia the panderita, or tambourine, is the chief instrument. It is wreathed with gaudy ribbons, and decked with bells, and beaten, shaken, and tossed in the air with graceful abandon to the ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... humanity, it was in order that they might, by diligence and reason, feel their way up it until they reached the revelation which waited in the end. Do not sneer at the humble beginnings, the heaving table or the flying tambourine, however much such phenomena may have been abused or simulated, but remember that a falling apple taught us gravity, a boiling kettle brought us the steam engine, and the twitching leg of a frog opened up the train ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the ship, howling a song to the following effect: "We come to you as friends, and have really no evil intention. Our fathers lived in strife with you, but let peace be between us. Receive us with hospitality, and expect the same from us." This song was accompanied by a sort of tambourine, which did not improve its harmony. They would not climb the ship's side till we had several times repeated our invitation, as it is not their custom to accept the first offer of hospitality, probably from ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... Mr. Lewis were walking silently homeward, when they came upon an Italian street musician. The man ground at his movable piano, the wife held the tambourine, while his leggy little daughter danced with surprising grace on the stone walk. As she trotted about gathering her harvest of pennies, Parks put his hand on her shoulder and ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... where he found, to his surprise, a ready-roasted deer, and some bread and salt. He alighted, and sat down near the enchanted provisions, which vanished at the sound of his voice, and presently a tambourine met his eyes, and a flask of wine. Taking up the instrument he played upon it, and chanted a ditty about his own wanderings, and the exploits which he most loved. He said that he had no pleasure in banquets, but only in the field fighting with heroes and crocodiles ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... tight-rope. During all these different productions, Fanfaro was continually assisting the performers; he handed Girdel the weights and took them from him; he accompanied Robeckal's sword exercise with hollow beats on a tambourine; he played the violin while Caillette danced on the rope, and acted as Bobichel's foil in his comic acts. Fanfaro himself was not to appear before the second part; for the conclusion of the first part a climax ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... It was a pretty little figure of a dancing girl with a tiny tambourine in her uplifted hand. She whirled and turned and the little tambourine gleamed and sparkled. Jardin took careful aim at the tambourine and missed. Three times he missed, the boys exclaiming that no one could hit anything so delicate. Finally he gave it up, giving ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... But one short year ago she had followed a hand-organ man and a monkey to a point safely distant from too-observant relatives and servants; there, beside the chattering monkey, she had sung and danced and scrambled for pennies and shaken a tambourine, and generally conducted herself like ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... garb, suited to the character she was sustaining; but her countenance was not to be mistaken. It was the same ballad-singer that had twice crossed her path, and given her mysterious intimations of the lurking mischief that surrounded her. When the rest of the performances were concluded, she seized a tambourine, and, tossing it aloft, danced alone to the melody of her own voice. In the course of her dancing, she approached to where Inez reclined: and as she struck the tambourine, contrived dexterously to throw a folded paper on the couch. Inez seized it with avidity, and concealed it ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... pavement in old times was to be trodden only by the feet of high nobility. From the deep wells, and perhaps from the prisons by the Bridge of Sighs, rise the accents of woe, as at the time when the tambourine was heard in the gay gondolas, and the golden ring was cast from the Bucentaur to Adria, the queen of the seas. Adria! shroud thyself in mists; let the veil of thy widowhood shroud thy form, and clothe in the weeds of woe the mausoleum of thy ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... see it all! I see it all!" shouted Evelyn, suddenly springing up and whirling about the room, using her letters as a tambourine. "It's Jessie's cousin! ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... violin of Palestine, and in appearance almost suggests to European eyes a dustpan and brush. The frame is of wood, covered, like a tambourine, with parchment, and placed across a handle from which hangs a single string of thick, black horsehair, very coarse in texture. It is played with a bow, also of horsehair, and is held much after the fashion of a violin, being chiefly used to accompany songs and ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... simpletons; that was a fair description, he said, of the Paphlagonians beyond Abonutichus; they were mostly superstitious and well-to-do; one had only to go there with some one to play the flute, the tambourine, or the cymbals, set the proverbial mantic sieve [Footnote: I have no information on Coscinomancy or sieve- divination. 'This kind of divination was generally practised to discover thieves ... They tied a thread to the sieve, by which it was upheld, then prayed to the Gods to direct ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... after Amasis had drawn him away to a seat immediately opposite the dancing-girls, who were just about to display their skill for the entertainment of the guests. A thin petticoat was the only clothing of these girls, who threw and wound their flexible limbs to a measure played on harp and tambourine. After the dance appeared Egyptian singers and buffoons for the further amusement of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gluttony, one of the chiefs entertained the assembly with a wild and most unmusical chant, to which he beat time on a sort of tambourine, while the women outside the enclosure beat ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... spoil us again!" he muttered. "You good-for-nothing! I'll teach you! Now take the tambourine and gather up the coins from the crowd. You'll get a beating anyway for this. But if you don't take up more than we had at the last town, you'll have such a trouncing as you never ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... abandoned to merriment: as I passed to my room to dress for dinner, I heard the sound of music in a small court, and, looking through a window that commanded it, I perceived a band of wandering musicians with pandean pipes and tambourine; a pretty coquettish housemaid was dancing a jig with a smart country lad, while several of the other servants were looking on. In the midst of her sport the girl caught a glimpse of my face at the window, and, coloring up, ran off with an air ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... irritably. "All right, Lieutenant! Play 'Jerusalem' on the cornet while I pass the tambourine. Damn the post-mortems! I want my wife, not a 'Ballington Booth' on the terrors of intemperance. I've got to have her, too. I—can't last this way. She's the only person who can straighten me up. ... I was doing fine. Had a job ... I'll go straight to hell ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the bundle, and there was a tambourine, some black lace, a packet of cigarette papers, and ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... more on all the Bar, and silence reigns through the calico halls of the Humboldt. His bland smile and his dainty plats, his inimitably choice language and his pet tambourine, his woolly corkscrew and his really beautiful music, have, I fear, vanished ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... time has come for you to stop. I might observe, not in order to combat your views, but merely to continue an interesting conversation, that there are still some knowledges which you have not assimilated—you do not yet know how to play the tambourine, nor how to be nice to your wife, nor how to get up first in the morning and cook the breakfast. Have you learned how to smoke strong tobacco as I do? or can you dance in the moonlight with a woman of the Shee? To understand the theory which underlies all things is not sufficient. It has occurred ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... the same day, which was Sunday, toward eight o'clock, at the moment when a considerable group of men and women, assembled round a street singer who was playing at the same time the cymbals with his knees and the tambourine with his hands, obstructed the entrance to the Rue de Valois, a musketeer and two of the light horse descended a back staircase of the Palais Royal, and advanced toward the Passage du Lycee, which, as every one knows, opened on to that street; but seeing ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... one hand, he is a prodigy of learning, a veritable warehouse of musical information, true, half-true and apocryphal; on the other hand, he is a jester who delights in reducing all learning to absurdity. Reading him somehow suggests hearing a Bach mass rescored for two fifes, a tambourine in B, a wind machine, two tenor harps, a contrabass oboe, two banjos, eight tubas and the usual clergy and strings. The substance is there; every note is struck exactly in the middle—but what outlandish tone colours, what strange, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... went up from the host of Israel. Moses led them in a song of praise, and Miriam, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine, and the women followed her in dances as they answered ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... ordered to be flayed alive, no doubt admired the romance of destiny that laid him on his ultimate island, a raised plank, so that the executioner might conveniently roll up the skin of his belly like an apron. And a hare that I once saw beating a tambourine in Regent Street looked at me so wistfully that I am sure it admired in some remote way the romance of destiny that had taken it from the woodland and cast it upon its ultimate island—in this case a barrow. But neither of these strange examples of the romance ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... pure; your father is a drum, Your mother is a kettledrum, you scum! Your brother is a tambourine—tum, tum! And you—why, you 're a captain ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... tours de force. It was always interesting to watch his audience, when, upon being recalled, he began one of the West Indian strains. There was a minor monotonous theme in them which fascinated the listeners. They heard the beat of the tambourine, and saw the movement of the dance, and with them all the characteristic scenery and association of the tropics filled their imaginations. The languid grace, the rich indolence, the gay profusion of the lands where the banana grows, they ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... burst of life and vitality of which it would be impossible to convey any idea, the whole body of mirth broke into a wild tarantella movement, so vivid and elastic and noisy that it seemed to Nino that he saw the very feet of the dancers, and heard the jolly din of the tambourine and the clattering, clappering ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... and obedient, his only fault being a tendency to strong and highly colored language. To make the marching more effective and develope a better sense of time, I instituted a very simple and rudimentary form of orchestra with a triangle, a tambourine, and finally a drum. When the latter instrument made its first appearance Jacob sought a secluded spot by the piano and gave himself up to a fit of fairly courteous but excessive mirth. "A drum!" he exclaimed, between his fits ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... woman passed with a tambourine in her hand and a bright coloured handkerchief over her head. She shook the tambourine and smiled kindly at ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... a silly thing," said she. "Do not take it so to heart. Put it out of sight. There is many a pretty tambourine-tosser to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... kind of timbrel, a rustic musical instrument made of a thin strip of wood about four inches wide brought round in the shape of a tube or drum, and having small metal discs fixed in holes at regular intervals like those of a tambourine. It is generally held in the right hand and ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... customs on all the rest of the world; still there were some Spanish and Italian ones. Lucretia was a graceful dancer, and she was always ready to display her skill. She frequently descended from the tribune and executed Spanish and Roman dances to the sound of the tambourine.[168] ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... upon it except as a means to an end, and my end has generally been military material. Perhaps the vicissitudes of my life have made me insensible to what are called reverses of fortune, for, when a child, I remember sleeping on the moonlit flags of Paris, with no pillow except my tambourine; and I remember it not without delight. Let us sit down. I feel I am talking in an excited, injudicious, egotistical, rhapsodical, manner. I thought I was calm, and I meant to have been clear. But the fact ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... led off in a double cotillion, to the moving strains of a violin and horn, the lively jingle of a string of sleigh-bells, and the genial snoring of a tambourine. Then came dextrous displays in the dances of our forbears, who followed the fiddle to the Fox-chase Inn or Garden of Gray's Ferry. There were French Fours, Copenhagen jigs, Virginia reels,—spirited figures blithely stepped. And the grave-faced, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... down upon the ground, and burst out a-crying; he could actually complete an entrechat of ten distinct beats, which I could not accomplish! However, I was well consoled by him; for he invented, for Aldridge's benefit, The Tambourine Dance, which had uncommon success. The dresses were Chinese. Twelve assistants held small drums furnished with bells; these were struck in the air by the dancer's feet when held as high as their arms ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... astonishing feats, came on purpose to England to congratulate me on such unparalleled achievements. But above all other rejoicings on my return, the musical oratorio and song of triumph were magnificent in the extreme. Gog and Magog were ordered to take the maiden tower of Windsor, and make a tambourine or great drum of it. For this purpose they extended an elephant's hide, tanned and prepared for the design, across the summit of the tower, from parapet to parapet, so that in proportion this extended elephant's hide was to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... earnest. When the Calenders had satisfied their hunger, they offered to play to their hostesses, if there were any instruments in the house. The ladies were delighted at the idea, and Sadie went to see what she could find, returning in a few moments laden with two different kinds of flutes and a tambourine. Each Calender took the one he preferred, and began to play a well-known air, while the ladies sang the words of the song. These words were the gayest and liveliest possible, and every now and then the singers had to stop to indulge the laughter ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... song, mates," shouted someone in the cart and everyone in the cart joined in a riotous song, jingling a tambourine and whistling. The woman went on ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of the company. So says Tabourot, long dead; and to-day we learn that, in most winters, a side of Morris-men dances at White Ladies Aston, one-and-a-half mile from Spetchley, Worcester. They blacken their faces and have for music accordion, triangle, and tambourine: their flute-player died recently. Tabourot suggests that the bells might have been borrowed from the crotali of the ancients in the Pyrrhic dance. He then describes the more modern Morris dance, which was ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... who was tying the ribbons on Split's tambourine, looked in vain for a reflection of that fever of delight which possessed herself. Split was cross. She was languid. She was dull. She did not seem to enjoy even the pair of slippers she was pulling on. They had been given to Sissy by Henrietta Blind-Staggers, and their newness and beauty ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... company in separate troops, with songs and dances, after the fashion and accompanied by the music of the provinces they represented,—the Poitevins playing on bagpipes; the Provencales on the viol and cymbal; the Burgundians and Champagners on the hautboy, bass viol, and tambourine; in like manner the Bretons and other provincialists. After the collation was served and the feast at an end, a large troop of musicians, habited like satyrs, was seen to come out of the opening of a rock, well lighted up, whilst nymphs were descending from the top in rich ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the ranches and come to town in piles; The ladies, kinder scatterin', had gathered in for miles. And yet the place was crowded, as I remember well, 'Twas gave on this occasion at the Morning Star Hotel. The music was a fiddle and a lively tambourine, And a viol came imported, by the stage from Abilene. The room was togged out gorgeous—with mistletoe and shawls, And the candles flickered festious, around the airy walls. The wimmen folks looked lovely—the boys looked kinder treed, Till the leader commenced yelling, "Whoa, fellers, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... Madame Dobson at the windows of the salon. The music from the neighboring Casino reached their ears, with the "Yo-ho!" of the boatmen and the footsteps of the dancers like a rhythmical, muffled drumming on the tambourine. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... straw hat flapping over her freckled face, tied with a gaudy ribbon under her three chins, singing, "I'd be a butterfly!" At her side, stood a little girl about six years old, holding an inverted tambourine, to catch windfalls in the ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... dolorous rattle. The gentleman who moved the mechanism was a sacristan in red cotton drawers and a lace cassock, who sat in full view in the niche behind the high altar. There seemed to be a spirited rivalry between him and the tambourine artists as to which could contribute the most noise, and I think a fair judge would have ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... upon them were to pay a couple of sous for the accommodation. They were always quite full- -a bumper house—as long as nothing was going forward; but let the show-woman appear with an eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of her tambourine the audience slipped off the seats, and stood round on the outside with their hands in their pockets. It certainly would have tried an angel's temper. The showman roared from the proscenium; he had been all over France, and nowhere, nowhere, 'not even on the ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... painted tambourine Shall grace its wall, And many a table small And folding screen Shall on its floor be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... which we can preserve civilisation is by behaving decently and intelligently. Sanity appeals and argues; our rulers persevere in their customary porkishness, while we acquiesce and obey. The only hope is a maniacal crusade; I am ready, when it comes, to beat a tambourine with the loudest, but at the same time I shall feel a little ashamed of myself. However"—Mr. Scogan shrugged his shoulders and, pipe in hand, made a gesture of resignation—"It's futile to complain that things are as they are. The fact remains that sanity unassisted is useless. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... more varied. Marie d'Aspilcouette, aged nineteen, 'voyoit dancer auec violons, trompettes, ou tabourins, qui rendoyent vne tres grande harmonie'.[531] Isaac de Queyran, aged twenty-five, said that a minor devil (diabloton) played on a tambourine, while the witches danced.[532] But as usual de Lancre is at his best when making ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... somewhat narrow. It is only in the case of the nations which are distinctly unmusical that it is entirely easy to recall their peculiarities, and the features by means of which this is usually done amount to parody. For example, when it is a question of something Turkish, much is made of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the fife. In something Persian or Arabic, the triangle cuts quite a figure; but when it is a question between composers of the civilized countries of Europe, music has become a cosmopolitan language among them all, and only a small number of national traits are to ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... or some Milesian Bacchis, and seal the bargain by the present of a handful of nuts? But we have known even such turn out intolerable tyrants, Syrian flute-girls and ballet-dancers, as Aristonica, and Oenanthe with her tambourine, and Agathoclea, who have lorded it over kings' diadems.[74] Why Syrian Semiramis was only the servant and concubine of one of king Ninus's slaves, till Ninus the great king seeing and falling in love with her, she got such power over him that she thought so cheap of him, that she asked ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... place was the singing of a novena not outside but within some of the village houses before a kind of altar gaily decorated and bearing at the top a waxen image of the Child Jesus. "Close to it the orchestra was grouped—a 'cello, two violins, a guitar, and a tambourine. The kneeling women huddled in front of the altar. All had on their heads their black mantelline. They began at once singing the novena stanzas appointed for that day; the tune was primitive and very odd: the first half of the stanza was quick and merry, the second half became a wailing ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... myself clown in an arm-chair near the window, and watched the white-sailed boats skimming like flecks of silver across the blue-green water. The tinkling of a tambourine by and by attracted my wandering attention, and looking into the street just below my balcony I saw a young girl dancing. She was lovely to look at, and she danced with exquisite grace as well as modesty, but the beauty of her face was not so much caused by perfection of feature ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... fellows, after a while, seeing a gathering of painted fans, and rustling hoops, and fluttering laces, upon the lawn, and a large immigration of hilarious neighbours besides, and two serious fiddlers, and a black fellow with a tambourine preparing for action, and the warm glitter of the western sun among the green foliage about the window, could stand it no longer, but stole away, notwithstanding a hospitable remonstrance and a protest from old Strafford, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the drawingroom, of course. [She goes out. Onward, Christian Soldiers, on the concertina, with tambourine accompaniment, is heard when the door ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... ladies and gentlemen," announced the suave magician, "this cabinet is bare; precisely like Mother Hubbard's immortal cupboard. Can you see anything there? No! I thought not. Now I will place within it these bells, so; and this tambourine, so; also this empty slate. You see it is empty. It is quite a simple slate, such as any school-child would use, and its sides are entirely bare. Now I close the doors of the cabinet, so; wave my ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... Land!" Mr. McCabe in that passage sounds as if he were half-way to "Oh! Beulah Land!" and the tambourine. ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... is furnished by an orchestra consisting of four men, three with copper gongs (gangsas), and one with a drum. The gongs are tambourine shape, with sides about an inch and a half high. They are placed against the thighs of the players who kneel on the ground, and are beaten with a stick and the palm of the hand or by the hands alone. [249] They doubtless came into ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... A tambourine is being played near by, and Fox, with a heart much lighter than his complexion, is indulging in a ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... Iambe, who with this wild music, heard thus for the first time, makes Demeter smile at last. "Great," so the chorus ends with a picture, "great is the power of the stoles of spotted fawn-skins, and the green leaves of ivy twisted about the sacred wands, and the wheeling motion of the tambourine whirled round in the air, and the long hair floating unbound in honour of Bromius, and the nocturns of the goddess, when the moon looks ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... and from it another band came forth, whose heads were covered by copper masks. Their dresses were of rich materials, embroidered in various bright colors. In one hand each of them carried a small tambourine and with the other he agitated a little bell. From the rim of each tambourine depended a metallic ball, so placed that the least movement of the hand brought it in contact with the resonant tympanum, which caused a strange, continuous undercurrent of pulsating sound. There new performers ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... the whole population of the Peninsula, there is only one person with a hunch back, and two or three who are lame. During the day they work or rest; but the night is reserved for dancing and conversation. As soon as the sun has set, the tambourine is heard, the women sing; the whole population is animated; love and the ball set every body in motion. "Africa dances all the night," is an expression which has become proverbial among the Europeans ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... sanguine:—"I am certain of the celestial protection of the Genii of Light," said Diana, and, producing her talisman, she bent her right knee to the ground, turned a complete somersault without falling, flung her tambourine into the air, which descended gently and remained suspended a yard from the ground, while she herself, passing into a condition of ecstasy, also rose into the air in a recumbent posture. She remained in this state for the space of fifteen minutes, the silence being only broken by the distant ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... with these verses and said to her, "I conjure thee, by my life, O Num, sing to us with the tambourine and other instruments!" So she sang the following ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... head was resourceful for any emergency. She felt sad at the separation from her husband, and her large black eyes were mournful but not tearful. To be and doing was her spirit. In spare moments she sat down to her tambourine to do crewel work on a tapestry picture. It was a large subject—The bard Ossian playing his harp to Malvino. Ossian seated on the front of some brown rocks, Malvino seated before him, her hands folded across his ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... night—but 'ow? That Mortimer carried on something 'ateful. There was 'is wife—you wouldn' think it in ordinary life, but, dressed up, she goes to your 'eart; an' she wore, first an' last, more dresses than you could count. First of all she 'it a little tambourine, an' said she was a gipsy maid. 'I'm a narch little gipsy,' she said, 'an' ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... instant, until satisfied she was observed by all, she began a slow and stately dance, timing her steps to the soft jingle of her tambourine. The girl had a lithe gracefulness and stately bearing unusual in those of her class—whose exhibitions were rather of the fast and furious kind with a liberal display of their forms—and when with a last low curtsy she ended, there was plenty of applause from all ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... wonderfully rascally and impudent, horns gleeful and windy and insolent, wood-wind puckish and obscene. Here a musical form reels hilariously and cuts capers and dances on bald heads. The variation of "Don Quixote" that describes with wood-wind and tambourine Dulcinea del Toboso is plump and plebeian and good-natured with her very person, is all the more trenchantly vulgar and flat for the preceding suave variation that describes the knight's fair, sonorous dream of her. There is no music more plaintively ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... for him was that here lay the one certain means of getting into touch with reality. Certainly that reality was sometimes of a disconcerting nature, and seldom of an illuminating one; he hated, as much as anyone, the tambourine business, except so far as it was essential; and he deplored the fact that, as he believed, it was often the most degraded and the least satisfactory of the inhabitants of the other world that most easily got into touch with the inhabitants of this. Yet, for him, the main ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... like Deborah, Beat the tambourine and danced While she sang a hymn in praise Of the slayer ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... jacket,—handed down from mother to daughter, and a wonderful sample of the handiwork that once made the country famous,—your numerous necklaces and other ornaments. You would carefully braid your heavy dark tresses and bedeck your shapely head with bright flowers, then with your panderetta or tambourine in hand, you too would join the merry throng that fill the air with mirthful songs and ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... left the ranches and come to town in piles; The ladies—"kinder scatterin'"—had gathered in for miles. And yet the place was crowded, as I remember well, 'Twas got for the occasion at "The Morning Star Hotel." The music was a fiddle and a lively tambourine, And a "viol come imported," by stage from Abilene. The room was togged out gorgeous—with mistletoe and shawls, And candles flickered frescoes around the airy walls. The "wimmin folks" looked lovely—the boys looked kinder treed, Till their leader commenced yellin': "Whoa, fellers, let's ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... the great god [who] is born when it is fettered, the Ur-kherp-hem,[6] Pa-sher-en-Ptah, the son of a man who held like offices, Peta-Bast, whose word (or voice) is truth, born of 8. the great decorated sistrum bearer and tambourine woman of Ptah, the great one of his South Wall, the Lord of Ankh-taui, whose word (or voice) ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... read the proclamation, which was received with nine rounds of British cheers. Our party then formed a large circle by joining hands; and sang the national anthem, accompanied by the Goderich band, which was composed of two fiddles and a tambourine. "Rule Britannia" for our sailor-king was also played and sung—I was going to say in good style, but at all events with ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... dancing was a combination of that of all those countries through which their race had passed—Turkey, Bohemia, Egypt, Italy, and Spain. They were enlivened by the sound of cymbals, which clashed on their arms, and by the hollow sounds of the "daires"—a sort of tambourine played ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... the fiddler, and he strolls on his own account, when the payment of salaries is suspended. A veteran actor was wont to relate his experiences of fifty years ago as a member of the Stratford-upon-Avon company, when the orchestra consisted only of a fife and a tambourine, the instrumentalists performing, as they avowed, "not from notes but entirely by ear." Presently the company removed to Warwick for the race week. But here the managerial difficulties increased—no band whatever could be obtained! This was the more ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... tawdry girls were coaxing maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their button-holes; another long low booth, from every crevice of which reeked odours of stale beer and smoke, by courtesy denominated tobacco, to the treble accompaniment of a jigging fiddle and a tambourine, and the bass one of grumbled oaths and curses within— these were the means of relaxation which the piety, freedom, and civilisation of fourteen centuries, from Hengist to Queen Victoria, had devised and made ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... than the Gypsies are in the habit of carrying it: a slack-rope dancer might be termed bittitardranoshellokellimengro, or slightly- drawn-rope-dancing fellow; a drum, duicoshtcurenomengri, or a thing beaten by two sticks; a tambourine, angustrecurenimengri, or a thing beaten by the fingers; and a fife, muipudenimengri, or thing blown by the mouth. All these compound words, however, would be more or less indefinite, and far beyond the comprehension of the Gypsies ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... bed-gowns, gilded bridles, spurs, shields, swords, harness, holy relics, and salted hogs, all hang in glory! Pictures, too, of rare value! Also music's ministrants,—the lute, the horn, the fiddle, the pipe, the gong, the viol, the salt-box, the tambourine and the triangle, make a dead-wall dream ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... many persons, then alone did mortal subordinates (consisting, as much as possible, of his own family) appear by his side. The queen, standing behind him like Isis behind Osiris, uplifts her hand to protect him, shakes the sistrum, beats the tambourine to dispel evil spirits, or holds the libation vase or bouquet. The eldest son carries the net or lassoes the bull, and recites the prayer while his father successively presents to the god each object prescribed by the ritual. A priest may occasionally act as substitute ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... among the crowd assembled to hear our names shouted out on the still air. We were greatly affected by the publicity of the occasion; but the village heard the announcement, both of our names and of our loss, with the phlegm of indifference. "Vingt francs pour avoir tambourine mademoiselle!" This was an item which a week later, in madame's little bill, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... right conclusion as to the authenticity of the African airs, especially as they have arranged the compositions of the great European masters in such a grotesque manner. The executants are five in number; one plays the tambourine, Mr. Germon, who is the leader; another the bone castanet; the third, the accordion; and the two others, the banjo, or African guitar. The castanet player does not sing; but his four colleagues have good ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... When he moved the Jew followed and took position at a commanding angle. The old man glanced from me to him and renewed his solicitations. So one could imagine an elderly hare thumping wildly on a tambourine with the stoat behind him. They told me afterwards that Jews own most of the stalls in Assouan bazaar, the Mussulmans working for them, since tourists need Oriental colour. Never having seen or ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... an organ was a proper musical instrument for use in sacred buildings, he certainly was not going to tolerate banjos and bones. This decision was a great disappointment to Benny Mallow, who had been selected by the managers to perform upon the tambourine, but in the revision of the programme Benny was assigned to duty in a tableau as a little fat goblin, and this so tickled his fancy that he did not ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... low down settlement work. She'll end in becoming a suffragette, and standing on a soap box she'll address the street rabble, perhaps wearing a large bonnet and standing beside a kettle holiday time ringing a bell and holding out a tambourine,—a Salvation Army woman. Oh! what a fool I was to let her go away from my influence," and she sobbed,—"to toil and save for her to make a brilliant match. See the way she rewards me. Why did I bring into this world such an ungrateful ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... Weinsberg to write the biography of this "delicate flower who lived upon sunbeams," we must shake off the spell of her strange personality and ask seriously what manner of mortal she was. This inquiry is the more imperative since the doings of the tambourine players and automatic writers, of whom so much is made in certain quarters to-day, pale into insignificance beside the story of ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... her, all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and, in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat revealed at ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... trombone, ophicleide[obs3]; French horn, saxophone, sax [informal], buglehorn[obs3], saxhorn, flugelhorn[obs3], althorn[obs3], helicanhorn[obs3], posthorn[obs3]; sackbut, euphonium, bombardon tuba[obs3]. [Vibrating surfaces] cymbal, bell, gong; tambour|!, tambourine, tamborine[obs3]; drum, tom-tom; tabor, tabret[obs3], tabourine[obs3], taborin[obs3]; side drum, kettle drum; timpani, tympani[obs3]; tymbal[obs3], timbrel[obs3], castanet, bones; musical glasses, musical stones; harmonica, sounding-board, rattle; tam-tam, zambomba[obs3]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... going to go round with my uncle and hold out my tambourine, so! (Poses and holds out tambourine.) And then I will-a collect the pennies, just like-a Mr. ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... musicians present, a man who had a thorough knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the village of Tantrum Clangley,—a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants as performers on instruments of percussion. These important members of the assembly were relegated to a ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... attendant Indians. In came the mystery man, covered over with the shaggy hide of a yellow bear, so that, had it not been that his mocassins, leggings and hands were visible, you might have supposed a real bear was walking upright, with a spear in one paw, and a rattle, formed like a tambourine, in the other. ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... dancer, such as may still be seen performing in Egypt, and we know that even in the fifth dynasty dancers called Denga (Dinka tribe?) were brought as curiosities to Egypt. B[e]s was often figured as dancing with a tambourine; he was the god of the dance, and protected infants from evil and witchcraft; hence he appears on the imposts of the capitals of the birth-house at Dendereh. The animal whose skin he wears is the cynaelurus guttatus, whose name is bes. Possibly ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... moment Dimsdale ceased to be the practical scientist—he was all sentimentalist. He gave himself the luxury of retrospection, he enjoyed the languorous moment; the music, the voice, the tinkle of the tambourine, the girl herself, sinuous, sensuous. It struck him that he had never seen an a'l'meh so cleanly and so finely dressed, so graceful, so delicate in manner. It struck him also that the kemengeh-player was a better-class Arab than he had ever met. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... assumed the office of parson and conducted the church services to a barn full of colored brethren; by performing the part of mourner whenever the professor undertook to superintend a funeral; and by playing the tambourine in accompaniment to the professor's violin whenever the latter became master of ceremonies ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... we'll quaff without measure. The toast and the joke shall go joyfully round, With love and good humour the room shall resound. The slipper be hid—the stocking let fall, And rare blindman's-buff shall keep up the ball; Whilst the merry spinette, and the sweet tambourine, Shall heighten and perfect the gay festive scene. Such mirth and such rapture never were known, I'm surprised that so long you will tarry; I prithee, Ulrica—prithee, come down; For the sport of all sports ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... to the double bass,—of instruments of brass, from trombones and bass kettledrums even unto trumpet and cymbal,—of instruments of wood, from winding serpents to octave flute,—and of fiddles of parchment, from the grosse caisse to the tambourine. Nor were ancient instruments wanting. These were of quaint forms and diverse constructions. Mr. Graeme would descant for hours on an antique species of spinnet, which he procured from the East, and which he vehemently averred, was the veritable dulcimer. He would display with great gusto, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman |
