"Scrannel" Quotes from Famous Books
... The people eyed us with no friendly glances; they were 'making custom' for the ruler's return. The vague phrase denoted, in this case, a frantic battering of drums, big and little; a squeaking of scrannel pipes; a feminine 'break-down' of the most effrenee description, and a general libation to the Bacchus of Blackland. A debauched and drunken Ashanti, who executed for our benefit a decapitation-dance, evidently wishing that we had been its objects, thanked us ironically ... — To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... have said) to understand a little of his system. We occasionally heard sounds of the Ululantes, and caught glances of Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English style was crampt to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were grating as scrannel pipes.[4]—He would laugh, ay, and heartily, but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble about Rex—or at the tristis severitas in vultu, or inspicere in patinas, of Terence—thin jests, which at their first broaching ... — The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... self-slaughter. For ignoble passion her sole remedy was to crush passion altogether. She calls to the priest to renounce the fleshly woman and cleave to Her, the Bride who took his plighted troth; but it is a scrannel voice sighing from ... — Robert Browning • C. H. Herford |