"Flail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "dews" fall from clouds; but light mist may do so. Who is the mother of the buds? In what way are they "rocked to rest"? How does the mother "dance about the sun"? Do you like the sound of the line, "I wield the flail of the lashing hail"? There are five "l's" in the line and they give it that liquid sound which you like. Did you ever see a farmer standing in the midst of a floor covered with stalks of grain, beating out the kernels with a flail? What does ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... flail and set to work. And he threshed so hard that all the grain was beaten to powder and the straw was broken up into useless pieces. But when Untamo saw this, he grew very angry, and cried out that Kullervo was a wretched ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... Baksh Punjabi Jat found a hide-bound flail; Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer oiled his Tonk jezail; Yar Mahommed Yusufzai spat and grinned with glee As he ground the butcher-knife ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... each drop striking through my jersey to my warm skin; and the accumulation of small shocks put me nearly beside myself. I decided I should buy a mackintosh at Noyon. It is nothing to get wet; but the misery of these individual pricks of cold all over my body at the same instant of time made me flail the water with my paddle like a madman. The Cigarette was greatly amused by these ebullitions. It gave him something else to look at besides ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... din, Afar its silent Alpine kin: I track thee over carpets deep To wealth's and beauty's inmost keep; Across the sand of bar-room floors Mid the stale reek of boosing boors; Where browse the hay-field's fragrant heats, Or the flail-heart of Autumn beats; 80 I dog thee through the market's throngs To where the sea with myriad tongues Laps the green edges of the pier, And the tall ships that eastward steer, Curtsy their farewells to the town, O'er the curved distance lessening down: I follow allwhere ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Sugyn the son of Sugnedydd (who would suck up the sea on which were three hundred ships so as to leave nothing but a dry strand. He was broad-chested). Rhacymwri, the attendant of Arthur (whatever barn he was shown, were there the produce of thirty ploughs within it, he would strike it with an iron flail until the rafters, the beams, and the boards were no better than the small oats in the mow upon the floor of the barn). Dygyflwng and Anoeth Veidawg. And Hir Eiddyl, and Hir Amreu (they were two attendants of ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... the flail of the monks,' he said abstractedly. 'They would have burned me and thousands more but ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... prepared by smoothing, and, if needful, stamping a sufficient space of ground, and enclosing it in boards 14 inches wide, set on edge. Into this bed the partially dried peat is thrown, and, as it cracks on the surface by drying, it is compressed by blows with a heavy mallet or flail, or by treading it with flat boards, attached to the feet, somewhat like snow shoes. By this treatment the mass is reduced to a continuous sheet of less than one-half its first thickness, and becomes so firm, that a man's step gives little ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... John. Devout was my intent; I haunted meetings, Used zealous greetings, Crept full of devotion; Smectymnuus won me first, then holy Nye prevail, (111) Then Captain Kiffin (112) slops me with John of Leyden's tail, Then Fox and Naylor bangs me with Jacob Beamond's flail. (113) ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... excellently devout and worthy woman!—for scarcely were we out of the village, when so fearful a storm of thunder, lightning, wind, and hail burst over our heads, that the corn all around us was beaten down as with a flail, and the horses before the coach were quite maddened; however, it did not last long. But my poor child had to bear all the blame again, [Footnote: Such sudden storms were attributed to witches.] inasmuch as Dom. Consul thought that it was not old Lizzie, which, nevertheless, was as ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, nor to be withstood by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... physical memories began to emerge, rather ridiculously, theatrical lodgings, provincial theatres, the arcades at Birmingham. And a blue straw hat that he had bought for her long ago; and at last her name. Kitty Messenger, and her mother, a golden-haired actress with a tongue like a flail in one temper, like the honey-seeking proboscis ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... Blaize, transported with rage. "If I am only a porter, while you pretend to be a major, I will let you see I am the better man of the two." And taking the goose by the neck, he swung it round his head like a flail, and began to batter Pillichody ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... spoke he swung his cutlass and made an arc of blue flame. The weapon became in his hands a flail, terrible to look upon, making lightnings and whistling in the air, but in reality not so deadly as it seemed. The fury of his onslaught would have beaten down the guard of any mere swordsman, but that I was not. A man, knowing his weakness and insufficiency in many and many a thing, may ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... awkward muse, With censures praise, with flatteries abuse. To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art; Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart. Then be advis'd, and scribble not agen; Thou'rt fashioned for a flail, and not a pen. If B——l's immortal wit thou wouldst descry, Pretend 'tis he that writ thy poetry. Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong; Thy poems and thy patients live ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... through the leaves of Plug Street Wood at No Man's Land between the lines, where every creature had been killed by the sweeping flail of machine-guns and shrapnel. Along the harvest-fields there were many barren territories like that, and up by Hooge, along the edge of the fatal crater, and behind the stripped trees of Zouave Wood there was no other gleaning to be had but that of broken shells and shrapnel ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Chronicle, writing on women farmers, quotes the tribute of HUTTON, the historian, to a Derbyshire lady who died at Matlock in 1854: "She undertakes any kind of manual labour, as holding the plough, driving the team, thatching the barn, using the flail; but her chief avocation is breaking horses at a guinea per week. She is fond of Pope and Shakespeare, is a self-taught and capable instrumentalist, and supports the bass viol in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... by name her cows, And deck her windows with green boughs; She can wreaths and tuttyes make, And trim with plums a bridal cake. Jack knows what brings gain or loss; And his long flail can stoutly toss: Makes the hedge which others break; And ever thinks what ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... later MacLure came out from Annie's room and laid hold of Tammas, a heap of speechless misery by the kitchen fire, and carried him off to the barn, and spread some corn on the threshing floor and thrust a flail into his hands. ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... tranquil spell lay fond Joe and Bob (with their cash to spend), Widow Precious (with her beer laid in), and Widow Carroway, with a dole at last extorted from the government; while Anerley Farm was content to hearken the creak of wagon and the ring of flail, and the rector of Flamborough once more rejoiced in the bloodless ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... himself is treated in this way in South America. The Sulphur Tyrant-bird picks up a young snake by the tail, and, flying to a branch or stone, uses it like a flail until ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... Egan O'Rahilly. Edited, with translation, by the Rev. P.S. Dinneen, M.A., for the Irish Texts Society, p. 11. O'Rahilly's charge against Cromwell is that he "gave plenty to the man with the flail," but beggared the great ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... became a far-reaching club. And, swinging it like a fiercely driven flail, he rushed into the crowd of savages, scattering them like chaff in a gale. The smashing blows fell on heads that split under their superlative force, and the ground about him became like a shambles. In a moment he discovered another figure in the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... as thick as harvests beneath hail, Grass before scythes, or corn below the sickle, Proving that trite old truth, that Life's as frail As any other boon for which men stickle. The Turkish batteries thrashed them like a flail, Or a good boxer, into a sad pickle Putting the very bravest, who were knocked Upon the head ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in the open air, upon a broad rock, or a smooth, dry plat of greensward; and it is occasionally done there yet, especially the threshing of the buckwheat crop, by a farmer who has not a good barn floor, or who cannot afford to hire the machine. The flail makes a louder thud in the fields than you would imagine; and in the splendid October weather it is a pleasing spectacle to behold the gathering of the ruddy crop, and three or four lithe figures beating out the grain with their flails in some sheltered ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... isle, o'er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue: Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun gleaming bright ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... should begin when three fourths of the leaves have fallen and most of the pods are ripe. Do not wait, however, until the pods are so dry that they have begun to split and drop their seeds. A slight amount of dampness on the plants aids the cutting. The threshing may be done with a flail, with pea-hullers, or with a ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett
... and surely and inexorably towards them. The angle of the bank was not steep and the elephant's speed never slackened on the slope. Its right shoulder struck a sapling and the sapling splintered. It was crashing forward in full charge. Again it trumpeted, trunk extended like a flail ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... of wheat and oats, rye and barley, were gathered with a sickle; the grain was thrashed with a flail; the grass in the meadows was cut with a scythe. But, now, all this is changed; on the great prairies of the West, the wheat, rye and oats are cut by the reaper, and with a steady hum the thrashing-machine does its work ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... into the river with me three times! 'Twas hardly I got her down the quays; and the first o' thim alecthric thrams she seen! Look at me hands, sir! She had me swingin' on the rope the way ye'd swing a flail. I tell you, Masther Freddy, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... men, their drovers, and they drew nigh him as he was amidst of the sheep, so that he could scarce see the way. Each of these three had a weapon; one a pole-axe, another a long spear, and the third a flail jointed and bound with iron, and an anlace hanging at his girdle. So they stood in the way and hailed him when the sheep were gone past; and the man with the spear asked him whither away. "I am turned toward Higham-on-the-Way," quoth he; "and how many miles ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... two furious wings, Each one upon each shoulder; With a sting in his tail as long as a flail, Which made him bolder and bolder. He had long claws, and in his jaws Four and forty teeth of iron; With a hide as tough as any buff, ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... a suit of armor through and through, and at a hundred steps he will not miss a dove. Czechowie (Bohemians) cut dreadfully with axes. For the big two-handed sword the German is the best. The Swiss is glad to strike the helmets with an iron flail, but the greatest knights are those who come from France. These will fight on horseback and on foot, and in the meanwhile they will speak very brave words, which however you will not understand, because it is such a strange language. They are pious people. They criticise us through the Germans. ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... moment his head rose above the level of the steep black wall his ears were filled with a deafening roaring and rushing, supplemented by most tremendous dull thuddings which shook the stack like the blows of a mighty flail. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... a boy on the farm, we used to thrash our grain with the hand-flail. Our custom was to thrash a flooring of sheaves on one side, then turn the sheaves over and thrash them on the other, then unbind them and thrash the loosened straw again, and then finish by turning the whole over and thrashing it once more. I suspect my reader will ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... gallant matron who pursued the most obnoxious farmer in the district even to his very porch with heavy stones and opprobrious epithets. Once when he thought he had left her far behind did he alight to draw breath and take a pinch of snuff, and she was upon him like a flail. With a terror stricken cry he leaped once more upon his horse and fled, but not without leaving his snuff-box in the hands of the derisive enemy. Meggy has long gone to the kirk-yard, but ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... harrying sound Lashes them like a flail the long hours round, Till to strained nerves 'twere sweeter To silence it with one fierce passionate grip, Than into some bland Lotos Land to slip, And moon out life ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... and meadows wide, Where moves the richly-laden wain To barns well-stored with new-made hay, Or where the flail at early day Rolls out ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... last day of the trial, was ushered in by a tempest of wind and rain, that drove the blinding sheets of sleet against the court-house windows with the insistence of an icy flail; while now and then with spasmodic bursts of fury the gale heightened, rattled the sash, moaned hysterically, like invisible fiends tearing at the obstacles that barred entrance. So dense was the gloom pervading the court-room, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the Lad, "lie still and don't grin, like a good bairn." But the little Imp of out of bed, and said, "Go east, Donald, and when ye come to the big brae (or brow of the hill), rap three times, and when they come, say ye are seeking Johnnie's flail." Donald did so, and out came a little fairy man, and gave him a flail. Then Johnnie took the flail, thrashed away at the straw, finished it, sent the flail back, and went to bed again. When the parents came back, Donald told them all ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... to talk of the work on the farm. The threshing was mostly done in winter with the hickory flail, one shock of fifteen sheaves making a flooring. On the dry cold days the grain shelled easily. After a flooring had been thrashed over at least three times, the straw was bound up again in sheaves, the floor completely raked over and the grain banked up against the side of ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... cuff &c 972; squash, dowse, swap, whap^, punch, thump, pelt, kick, punce^, calcitration^; ruade^; arietation^; cut, thrust, lunge, yerk^; carom, carrom^, clip [Slang], jab, plug [Slang], sidewinder [U.S.], sidewipe^, sideswipe [U.S.]. hammer, sledge hammer, mall, maul, mallet, flail; ram, rammer^; battering ram, monkey, pile-driving engine, punch, bat; cant hook; cudgel &c (weapon) 727; ax &c (sharp) 253. [Science of mechanical forces] dynamics; seismometer, accelerometer, earthquake detector. V. give an impetus &c n.; impel, push; start, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... While the real pioneer uses whatever material he finds at hand, it does no harm for him to know that to make a really good thatch one should use only straw which is fully ripe and has been thrashed clean with an old-fashioned flail. The straw must be clear of all seed or grain and kept straight, not mussed up, crumpled, and broken. If any grain is left in the straw it will attract field-mice, birds, domestic mice and rats, domestic turkeys and chickens, and these ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... pain and bellowing: Uxmoor dragged by the tail and compelled to follow in preposterous, giant strides, barely touching the ground with the point of his toe, pounded the creature's ribs with such blows as Zoe had never dreamed possible. They sounded like flail on wooden floor, and each blow was accompanied with a loud jubilant shout. Presently, being a five's player, and ambidexter, he shifted his hand, and the tremendous whacks resounded on the bull's left side. The bull, thus belabored, and resounding like the big drum, made ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Christmas comes but once a year, But when it comes it brings good cheer, And when it's gone it's no longer near. May luck attend the milking-pail, Yule logs and cakes in plenty be, May each blow of the thrashing-flail Produce good frumenty. And let the Wassail Cup abound, Whene'er ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... outrolled of bells, so sent he forth Defiance from fierce lip, vindictive chaunt, And blight and ban, and maledictive rite Potent on face of Spirits impure to raise These plague-spots three, Defeat, Madness, Despair; Nor stinted flail of taunt—"When first my bark Threatened your coasts, as now upon the hills Hung ye in cloud; as now, I raised this Cross; Ye fled before it and again shall fly!" So hurled he back their squadrons. Day ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... of whose tall elms We may discern the thresher at his task, Thump after thump resounds the constant flail That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff, The rustling straw sends up a fragrant mist Of atoms, sparkling ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... undaunted now, feeling her power and her strength again, followed close. And like blows of a flail, the sputtering, flaring flame beat down upon ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... realized, the king adopted, in addition to the simple costume of the old chiefs, the long or short petticoat, the jackal's tail, the turned-up sandals, and the insignia of the supreme gods,—the ankh, the crook, the flail, and the sceptre tipped with the head of a jerboa or a hare, which we misname the cucupha-headed sceptre.* He put on the many-coloured diadems of the gods, the head-dresses covered with feathers, the white and the red crowns either separately or combined so as ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording them here, lest Tom's wit should prove to be like that ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... within a shrine through whose open doors he might be seen wearing a red necklace over his close-fitting case of white bandaging, his green face surmounted by the tall white diadem flanked by two plumes, his slender hands grasping flail and crook, the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the struggle of feeling to which this honest young fellow fell a prey when we read the letter that he now indited, in which every stroke of the flail which scourged his conscience will be found ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... some of this corn with a flail. I heard of it with astonishment. "A flail?" "Yes," he said; "my old dad put me to it when I was seventeen, so I had to learn." He seemed to think little of it. But to me threshing by hand was so obsolete and antiquated a thing as to be a novelty; nor yet to ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... systems. One is the hammermill—a grinding chamber containing a rotating spindle with steel tines or hammers attached that repeatedly beats and tears materials into smaller and smaller pieces until they fall out through a bottom screen. Hammermills will flail almost anything to pieces without becoming dulled. Soft, green materials are beaten to shreds; hard, dry, brittle stuff is rapidly fractured into tiny chips. Changing the size of the discharge screen adjusts the size of the final product. By using very ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... and while I stood in the dark gloom at the far end, with my hand on the dribbling stern-gland, there came a sudden thump and a grinding shock. The turning shaft shook and chattered before my eyes, the propeller outside caught in something, shuddered, broke clear and beat like a flail. Then the ship lifted bodily and fell, bump, bump, bump. I stood there transfixed. What could it be? I looked along the dark tunnel to where the lights of the engine-room showed in a pale glint and I could have sworn I saw the whole bag of tricks move slowly ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... to the window and raised big hands toward the spear-points of the aloof stars. "Master of us all!" he cried; "O Father of us all! the Hammer of the Scots am I! the Scourge of France, the conqueror of Llewellyn and of Leicester, and the flail of the accursed race that slew Thine only Son! the King of England am I, who have made of England an imperial nation, and have given to Thy Englishmen new laws! And to-night I crave my hire. Never, O my Father, have ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... field of Mars, which Tarquin had owned, was devoted to the service of that god; it happening to be harvest season, and the sheaves yet being on the ground, they thought it not proper to commit them to the flail, or unsanctify them with any use; and, therefore, carrying them to the river side, and trees withal that were cut down, they cast all into the water, dedicating the soil, free from all occupation, to the deity. Now, these thrown in, one upon another, and closing together, the stream did not ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... yo'd be mad as soin as yo heard, Abaat that oud kaa at belonged to Blue Beard, For I like as I saw yo just hod of its tail, And braying it rump wi th' end o' yor flail; For I wisht monny a time at yo'd been here, For swallowing th' plan yo'd a ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... how the drudging Goblin swet, To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn, That ten ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... the man went sheer raving mad from the emotions of his forefathers and from his own. He came to close quarters. He gripped the stick with his two hands and made it speed like a flail. The snake, tumbling in the anguish of final despair, fought, bit, flung itself upon this stick ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... at its last gasp when we left the schooner. It soon rolled over on its side. The mysterious flail stopped beating the huge body and the water seemed churned excitedly at the nose ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... of strength and endurance. The work in which he most delighted was precisely that which most labourers hated, before threshing machines came in despite the action of the "mobs"—threshing out corn with the flail. From earliest dawn till after dark he would sit or stand in a dim, dusty barn, monotonously pounding away, without an interval to rest, and without dinner, and with no food but a piece of bread and a pinch of salt. Without the salt he would ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... prance with me his statue round. The public safety, I foresee, Henceforth depends alone on me; And while this vital breath I blow, Or from above or from below, I'll sputter, swagger, curse, and rail, The Tories' terror, scourge, and flail. M. Tim, you mistake the matter quite; The Tories! you are their delight; And should you act a different part, Be grave and wise, 'twould break their heart. Why, Tim, you have a taste you know, And often see a puppet-show: Observe the audience is in pain, While Punch is hid behind the scene: ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... the distant hills, that seemed to blanch in their helplessness as the wind smote them like a flail; and it wove a grayish veil over the leafless boughs of bending, shivering elms, on the long, dim avenue. The wintry afternoon closed swiftly, and, in its dusky dreariness, Salome listened to the tattoo of the rain on the roof, and to the miserere that wailed through the lonely chambers ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... behind, Have each a med'cine for the rustic mind; Nor has he care to whom his wealth shall go, Or who shall labour with his spade and hoe; But as he lends the strength that yet remains, And some dead neighbour on his bier sustains, (One with whom oft he whirl'd the bounding flail, Toss'd the broad coit, or took the inspiring ale,) "For me," (he meditates,) "shall soon be done This friendly duty, when my race be run; 'Twas first in trouble as in error pass'd, Dark clouds and stormy cares whole years o'ercast, But calm my ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... liberty, for you do more harm in an hour, than a body can set right again in a month!' Will then took up hats full of the corn and chaff, and threw it in the two men's faces; afterwards taking up a flail, he gave Simon a blow across his back, saying, at the same time, 'I will show you the way to thresh, and separate the flesh from the bones.' 'O! will you so, young squire?' said John; 'I will show you the way to make naughty boys good.' He then left the barn, but presently returned accompanied ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... of rapier, poniard, and pistols, which were placed nevertheless, at no great distance from his chair. One offensive implement, indeed, he thought it prudent to keep on the table beside his huge Coke upon Lyttleton. This was a sort of pocket flail, consisting of a piece of strong ash, about eighteen inches long, to which was attached a swinging club of lignum-vitae, nearly twice as long as the handle, but jointed so as to be easily folded up. This instrument, which bore at that time the singular name of the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... siege. The trainbands were under arms all night. Preparations were made for barricading the great thoroughfares. Patrols marched up and down the streets. Cannon were planted round Whitehall. No citizen thought himself safe unless he carried under his coat a small flail loaded with lead to brain the Popish assassins. The corpse of the murdered magistrate was exhibited during several days to the gaze of great multitudes, and was then committed to the grave with strange and terrible ceremonies, which indicated rather fear and the thirst of vengeance shall ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the trumpeters playing alluringly up the lanes to young hearts to come away; pipers squeezed out upon their instruments the fine tunes that in the time I speak of no lad of Gaelic blood could hear but he must down with the flail or sheep-hook and on with the philabeg and up with the sword. Gentlemen were for ever going to wars or coming from them; were they not of the clan, was not the Duke their cousin, as the way of putting it was, and by his gracious offices many a pock-pudding English corps got a colonel with ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... racquet sports, the racquet should do the work. The ball willingly goes where the racquet head directs it. Do not flail or attempt to push your shots. Hit them crisply with the snap of your cocked wrist, and at all times attempt ...
— Squash Tennis • Richard C. Squires
... out from Annie's room and laid hold of Tammas, a heap of speechless misery by the kitchen fire, and carried him off to the barn, and spread some corn on the threshing-floor, and thrust a flail into ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... weighed upon her now was certain, for the thoughts that possessed her seemed bowing her person forward. She stooped heavily toward the fire, with her long, flail-like arms clasped around her knees, not rocking back and forth as seemed most natural to the position, but immovable as the andiron upon which her feet rested, and sombre as the storm that shook the windows and howled down ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... knew that, so handicapped, she could never reach them, and with shaking, fumbling fingers she set herself to unfasten the straps that bound the skis. It took her a long, long time—all the longer for her fevered haste. And still that awful, flail-like sound went on and on, though all sound ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... charged, Gharib met him like a hungry lion, and the brigand aimed a blow at his head with his mace; but he evaded it and it smote the earth and sank therein half a cubit deep. Then Gharib took his battle flail and smiting Jamrkan on the wrist, crushed his fingers and the mace dropped from his grasp; whereupon Gharib bent down from his seat in selle and snatching it up, swiftlier than the blinding leven, smote him therewith full on the flat of the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... a time. Cadillac scowled and beat his palm upon his knee as a flail beats grain, and I knew he needed no words of mine. I thought that he was going over his defenses in his mind, and I began to calculate how many rounds of shot I had in my canoes, and to hope that ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... East to Wast, An' the rein catched the grey mear's tail, An' her heels to save her hin'er en' Gaed lashin' like a flail. An' the haill apotheck lay in spails, As the grey mear warsled free; An' when auld Jock Smairt saw the fashion o' his cairt: "Wha's seekin' ony ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... ploughed up my little fields; and, after making a harrow, I harrowed in my wheat with the dogs. The first year I had thirty bushels of beautiful wheat. This I cut with a sickle, and then thrashed it with a flail. Mrs Young sewed several sheets together, and one day, when there was a steady, gentle breeze blowing, we winnowed the chaff from the wheat in the wind. There were no mills within hundreds of miles of us; so we merely cracked the wheat in a hand coffee-mill, and used some of it for porridge, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... spend with friend and foe, At home che hold the plough by th' tail: Che dig, che delve, che zet, che zow, Che mow, che reap, che ply my flail. A pair of dice is thy delight, Thou liv'st for most part by the spoil: I truly labour day and night To get my living by my toil. Chill therefore sure this issue make: The best deserver draw ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the farmers were in dismay,—nobody more so than Farmer Weitbreck, who had miles of bottom-lands, in grain of one sort and another, all yellow and nodding, and ready for the sickle, and nobody but himself and his son John to swing scythe, sickle, or flail on the place. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... literally, "the bean will be struck" or "laid about me;" meaning, "I shall have to smart for it." There is considerable doubt what is the origin of this expression, and this doubt existed as early as the time of Donatus. He says that it was a proverb either taken from the threshing of beans with a flail by the countrymen; or else from the circumstance of the cooks who have dressed the beans, but have not moistened them sufficiently, being sure to have them thrown at their heads, as though for the purpose of softening them. Neither of these solutions seems so probable as that suggested by Madame ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... these plays to flail the follies of his time, he makes his chief characters, in spite of his realistic purpose, extreme and distorted 'humors,' each, in spite of individual traits, the embodiment of some one abstract vice—cowardice, sensualism, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Western Empire in 1198. The kingdom was at its zenith under Hetum or Hayton I., husband of Leon's daughter Isabel (1224-1269); he was, however, prudent enough to make an early submission to the Mongols, and remained ever staunch to them, which brought his territory constantly under the flail of Egypt. It included at one time all Cilicia, with many cities of Syria and the ancient Armenia Minor, of Isauria and Cappadocia. The male line of Rupen becoming extinct in 1342, the kingdom passed to John de Lusignan, of the royal house of Cyprus, and in 1375 it was put an ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and other vegetables. As soon as their crops were put away in the ground, [Footnote: The mode of securing their corn was first to dry the ears by fire. When perfectly dry, they would then beat them with a flail and pick all the cobs out. The grain was then winnowed and put into sacks. These were put in the ground in a large cylinder made out of elm bark, set in deep in the ground and made very dry, filling this cylinder ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... Afric soil, Ye worn and weary, hoist the sail, For your own glebes and garners toil With easy plough and lightsome flail. A father's home ye never knew, A father's home your sons shall have from you. Enjoy your palmy groves, your cloudless day, Your world that demons tore away. Look up! look up! the flaming sword Hath vanished! and behold your ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... rotating his crops and of fertilizing his fields. The farming implements in use showed little of that mechanical ingenuity which is now characteristic of the American people. The plough was still a clumsy affair with heavy beam and handles, and wooden mould-board. The scythe, the sickle, and the flail were the same as their forbears ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... Amaryllis, or played with the tangles of Neaera's hair,—should not have worn well-anointed love-locks and snowy linen,—should, on the other hand, have bared his brawny arm, and sent the hissing flail down swiftly upon the waled and blistered back of Sham! How much better would it have been, if he had written a history, in twelve elephantine volumes, of the rise, culmination, and decay of the Empire of Barataria, which we would have gone to prison, the rack, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... village, lying in a shroud of mist, come the measured sounds of the thresher's flail, now in sudden volleys, now slowly and with a dragging cadence, now in sharp, crackling bursts, and now again with a dull and hollow beat. Sometimes there is the noise of one flail only, but presently others have joined in on all sides. The children stand still and seem lost. Finally ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... see me. She first took me to the farmyard, and I peeped into the barn. There I saw a man thrashing, and as he beat the corn with his flail he made a great noise. Then I went to the pond where the ducks were swimming, and I saw the little wooden houses where the hens slept at night. The hens were feeding all over the yard, and the prettiest little chickens ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... relief as the fact, that the immeasurable torrent of abuse that greeted his expressed opinion did not in any least degree avail to make him one of the pro-slavery faction. The concession of 1850 was one which he would not have made, and it must be the last. Welcome to him the iron flail of war, whose tribulation saved the immortal wheat of justice and purged away the chaff of wrong ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... over, except to die. I had no sense of fear; no thought but to kill and be killed. I felt within me strength—desperate, insane strength. The rifle butt splintered in my hands, but the bent and shapeless barrel rose and fell like a flail. I saw it crush against skulls; I jabbed it straight into red faces; I brought it down with all my force on clutching arms. For an instant Tim was beside me. He had lost his gun and was fighting with a knife. It was only a glimpse I had of him through red mist—the next instant he ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... his acquiring, including nearly all the divine attributes except that sense of humour. The beautiful SYBIL has always possessed but little of it also, and what she had has been struck from her by Cupid's flail. Naked of the saving grace, they face ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... as I could do. I am sure strength must have been granted me for the task. For a long while, or what seemed to me a long while, nobody heard. Seth was making a great noise with his flail, and if my shout reached his ears he only thought it child's play; but when it kept on and on, so shrill and so full of distress, he dropped his flail at last ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... had come to understand was the cause of all his misery. There would come into his great eyes a look of such pitiful melancholy that one might almost fancy tears rolling out. Then he would be roused by an exasperated driver, who jerked cruelly on the lines and used his whip as if it had been a flail. ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... not go alone, for his men leapt after him like hounds. But he fought his way in the lead with a clubbed rifle, and stood over Kagig's body working the weapon like a flail. That was all I saw of that encounter, for Mahmoud decided to attempt escape by the upper way again, and it was I who captured him. I landed on him through the darkness with my clenched fist under the low hung angle of his jaw and, seizing his leg, threw ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... has generally fallen, pull up the male plants, leaving only the females to mature. Cut the seed-plants after the first hard frost, and carry in wet, so as to avoid loss by shelling. Seed is easily separated by a common flail. After the seeds are thrashed out, they should be spread thin, and thoroughly dried, or their vegetative power will be destroyed by heat or decay. They should be spread to be kept for the next spring's planting, and not be kept in large bulk. Their vegetation ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... was in town but a few months before. I was quite ashamed of my bad memory. My sister Sarah shewed me all the beautiful places about grandmamma's house. She first took me into the farm-yard, and I peeped into the barn; there I saw a man thrashing, and as he beat the corn with his flail, he made such a dreadful noise that I was frightened and ran away: my sister persuaded me to return; she said Will Tasker was very good-natured: then I went back, and peeped at him again; but as ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... farmer class, I hasten to disclaim for it any especial consideration given it because of its contribution to the welfare of mankind. We are as useful as any other hard-working people, no more and no less. We claim no higher appreciation for muscular effort exerted in swinging the flail than for that applied to the ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... in the full of the moon carpenters refuse, as being soft, and, by reason of their moistness, subject to corruption; and in its wane farmers usually thresh their wheat, that being dry it may better endure the flail; for the corn in the full of the moon is moist, and commonly bruised in threshing. Besides, they say dough will be leavened sooner in the full, for then, though the leaven is scarce proportioned to the meal, yet it rarefies and leavens ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... kindle them to glory, I will beat the darkness back; Streaming, gleaming, I will goad them to my glory and my fame. Bring me gnarly limbs of live-oak, aid me in my frenzied fight; Strips of iron-wood, scaly blue-gum, writhing redly in my hold; With my lunge of lurid lances, with my whips that flail the night, They will burgeon into beauty, they will foliate in gold. Let me star the dim sierras, stab with light the inland seas; Roaming wind and roaring darkness! seek no mercy at my hands; I will mock the marly heavens, lamp ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... field of buckwheat that had been cut some days and had fully ripened. A woman was threshing out the grain with a flail upon a spread canvas, surrounded by a circle of purple-tinted cones, the sheaves leaning together. Now the wide level moor returned, but Nature was not quite the same here as she had been before. The vast expanse was dotted over with dark little juniper bushes. These were ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... and myself into the fray, however, turned the tide of battle in our favor. Joe had caught up the chair to which he had been bound, and wielded it like a flail, with every swing of it breaking a head or snapping an arm. And my musket took a heavy toll. The room rang with the din of battle—the shouts of the men, the whoops of the negroes, the clashing of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... in a flash. Like lightning his right wing came round with a terrific flail-stroke, and hit Pig Head in the face at the precise instant that the surgical instrument he carried as his beak sank deep into one of Pig Head's calves. The Chieftain was upside-down at the moment, and his legs were tied together, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... category, as proved by his costume which in some countries he has worn for centuries; and by his tools, which are identical with those used by his earliest forefathers. His plough is unchanged; he carries the seed in his apron; mows with the historical scythe, and threshes with the time-honored flail. But we know that all this can be done by machinery. The agrarian question is only a question of machinery. America must conquer Europe, in the same way as large landed possessions absorb small ones. The peasant is consequently a type which is in course of extinction. ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... deep-seated in biology because it secures most joy of life with least expense. By it Eros of old ordered chaos, and by its judicious use the human soul is cadenced to great efforts toward high ideals. The many work-songs to secure concerted action in lifting, pulling, stepping, the use of flail, lever, saw, ax, hammer, hoe, loom, etc., show that areas and thesis represent flexion and extension, that accent originated in the acme of muscular stress, as well as how rhythm eases work and also makes it social. Most of the old work-canticles are lost, and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... purpose, and the women to be assigned their tasks, and the totals of everything to be calculated, so that one may see the value of what has been done. And lastly will come winter, when in every threshing-floor the flail will be working, and the grain, when threshed, will need to be carried from barn to binn, and the mills require to be seen to, and the estate factories to be inspected, and the workmen's huts to be visited for the purpose of ascertaining how the muzhik is faring ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... this corn, Colonel Crawford saw the Newars [Picture: Flail] using a kind of flail, an implement which I have never observed in India. Three pieces of Bamboo, about eighteen inches long, were fastened together in a parallel manner, at about a finger’s breadth asunder, and then fixed to a peg, which passed through a hole in the end of a longish pole ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... the rocks when they, like ourselves, heard the sound of thrashing in a barn, which started an argument between them on their relative abilities in the handling of the flail. As they could not settle the matter by words, they resolved to do so by blows; so they made their way to the farm and requested the farmer to allow them to try their hand at thrashing corn, and to judge which of them shaped the better. The farmer ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... solitude. He describes the walk to the park at Weston Underwood, the prospect from the hilltop, touches upon his privilege in having a key of the gate, describes the avenues of trees, the wilderness, the grove, and the sound of the thresher's flail then suggests to him that all live by energy, best ease is after toil. He compares the luxury of art with wholesomeness of Nature free to all, that brings health to the sick, joy to the returned ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Stafford, ecclesiastics like Archbishop Plunkett, and commoners like Langhorne and Pickering, were dragged to death on the testimony of the vilest of the vile, without a voice being raised in their behalf; or how it could be considered a patriotic act on the part of an English Protestant to carry a flail loaded with lead beneath his cloak as a menace against his harmless neighbours who differed from him on points of doctrine. It was a long madness which has now happily passed off, or at least shows itself in a ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... know the charm of his manner and the delight of his conversation. If I had been even more prejudiced than I was, I could not have withstood that easy grace, that winning cordiality. Every one knew where he had stood during the war, and how he had wielded the flail of his "lashing hail" against the South and the Southern cause and "Southern sympathizers." But that warfare was over for him, and out of kindly regard for my feelings he made no allusion to the great quarrel, ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... the gate by a little green man with a queer cap who had been seen slipping under a culvert? Canon Atkinson told us of this lady who knew all these strange things, and of the Hart Hall "Hob" who worked so hard with his flail, and of many other curious folk who frequented the Yorkshire moors in olden days. The last witch had just died before he went to Danby, but he found the whole atmosphere of the folklore firmament so surcharged with the being and work of the witch, that he seemed ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... should not be removed far from her body. A beautiful microscopic hawk, which would have made a lovely watch-charm, was attached by a thread to a necklace of small plates of blue glass, to which was hung also a sort of amulet in the shape of a flail, made of turquoise-blue enamel. Some of the plates had become semi-opaque, no doubt owing to the heat of the boiling bitumen which had been poured over them, and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... the water had devoured the antelope; something beneath the water had dragged the leopard to its doom, and swish! a huge flail tore the speargrass to ribbons and sent Adams flying backward with the wind of ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... think I've expressed my meaning quite plainly, (reads) "Farmer Flail, I'm instructed by lord Austencourt, your landlord, to inform you, by word of letter, that if you can't afford to pay the additional rent for your farm, you must turn out." I think that's clear enough. "As to your putting in the plea of a large family, we cannot allow ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... solid forest gives fluid utterances, They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch, Hoe, rake, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Kater Murr, Hoffmann's favorite but unfinished work. In the third and last volume, Kreisler was to end, not in composure and illumination, as the critics would have required, but in utter madness: a sketch of a wild, flail-like scarecrow, dancing vehemently and blowing soap-bubbles, and which had been intended to front the last title-page, was found among Hoffmann's papers, and engraved and published ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... which was her landmark. The path she was following ended at a sort of shed covered with a furze-roof, supported by four stout trees with the bark still on them. A mud wall formed the back of this shed, under which were a cider-mill, a flail to thresh buckwheat, and several agricultural implements. She stopped before one of the posts, unwilling to cross the dirty bog which formed a sort of courtyard to the house which, in her Parisian ignorance, she had taken ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... farm the historical Jock Howison asked and got from our gay James the Fifth, "the gudeman o' Ballengiech," as a reward for the services of his flail, when the King had the worst of it at Cramond Brig with the gypsies. The farm is unchanged in size from that time, and still in the unbroken line of the ready and victorious thrasher. Braehead is held on the condition ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... doors, which led in to the barn floor. He climbed up a tall ladder to a loft under the roof of the barn, and threw down some sheaves of wheat,—as many as he thought would be necessary to produce the quantity of grain which the farmer had ordered. He then descended the ladder, and got a flail, and began to ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... noticed separately, but one thing is absolutely certain, that a much higher standard of usefulness, both in equality of length, amount of anchylosis, and position, is needed in the lower than in the upper limb. For a leg hanging like a flail, or shortened by some inches, is not so good for purposes of locomotion as a wooden leg is, while an arm, even though powerless at the elbow, and perhaps much shortened, can be so strengthened and supported by slings and bandages as to give a most ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell
... Ghost" he revelled in the delights that await the bibliomaniac in the future state, where there is no admission to the women folk who, "wanting victuals, make a fuss if we buy books instead"; while in "Flail, Trask and Bisland" is the very essence of bibliomania, the unquenchable thirst for possession. And yet, despite these self-accusations, bibliophily rather than bibliomania would be the word to characterize his conscientious purpose. ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field |
