"Tambourine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... received the 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 ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand; and as all the women followed her with tambourines and with dancing, ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... 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 music ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... them on board, by showing them mirrors and glass trinkets; the sailors even executing lively dances, in the hope of inspiring them with confidence; but the savages, taking fright at the sound of a tambourine, which seemed to them a sign of hostility, discharged a flight of arrows, and directed their canoe towards one of the caravels, whose pilot endeavoured to reassure them by steering towards them; but in vain, the canoe soon made off, and was ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... 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 again if I don't ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... world to-night? Where blue eyes are brightly glancing, While to measures of delight Fairy feet are deftly dancing; Where the young Euphrosyne Reigns the mistress of the scene, Chasing gloom, and courting glee, With the merry tambourine; Many a form of fairy birth, Many a Hebe, yet unwon, Wirt, a gem of purest worth, Lively, laughing Pleasanton; Vails and Tayloe will be there, Gay Monroe so debonair, Hellen, pleasure's harbinger, Ramsay, Cottringers ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Cybele)—Ver. 4. During the Festival of Cybele, the Galli or eunuch-priests of the Goddess went about with an image of her seated on an ass, and beating a tambourine, for the purpose of making a collection to defray the expenses of the worship. They were called by the Greeks me:tragurtai, "Collectors for the Mother." See the Fasti of Ovid, B. iv., l. 350, vol. i., p. ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... 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 ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... 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 finish, where the man with the bones ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... him stuffed in a hot shed all day, wheezing polkas out of the hurdy-gurdy, 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 Tivoli Hotel, and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... world; as it is said (Isa. v. 11-15), "Woe unto those that get up early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink; and continue until late at night, till flushed with wine. And the harp and psaltery, tambourine and flute, and wine are ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... 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 ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... 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 ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... [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 ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... be; and now I think of it, one of these very dwellings must have been the Hotel de Gondelaurier, where, according to the most veracious historian that ever was, poor Esmeralda once danced and played the tambourine to divert the fair damsel Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier and her noble friends, all of whom she so transcended in beauty, purity, goodness, and breeding (although she was but an untaught, wandering gypsy girl, out ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... of young men, armed with the necessary implements for planting the shaft in the ground; and after them a troop of maidens, bearing bundles of rushes. Next came the minstrels, playing merrily on tabor, fife, sacbut, rebec, and tambourine. Then followed the Queen of the May, walking by herself,—a rustic beauty, hight Gillian Greenford,—fancifully and prettily arrayed for the occasion, and attended, at a little distance, by Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, the Hobby-horse, and a band of morrice-dancers. Then came ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... a camp-stool inside the cabinet; a number of cane-bottomed chairs on the platform, and also the various properties of a spirit seance, familiar to me from long experience, guitar, fiddle, handbells, tambourine, &c. One adjunct alone was new; and that was a green stable bucket, destined, I could not doubt, to figure in what my Rimmel-scented programme promised as the climax of Part I.—the "Great Pail Sensation." ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... 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
... roadside, attired as a gipsy, with a scarlet bandana handkerchief twisted round her head, a short skirt reaching not quite to her ankles made also of scarlet, and a little gay blue shawl across her shoulders. She was carrying a tambourine in one hand and in the other a ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... man's drugs. The performance of a self-confident angakok is quite impressive—if one has not witnessed it too many times before. The chanting, or howling, is accompanied by contortions of the body and by sounds from a rude tambourine, made from the throat membrane of a walrus stretched on a bow of ivory or bone. The tapping of the rim with another piece of ivory or bone marks the time. This is the Eskimo's only attempt at music. Some women are supposed to possess the power of the angakok—a combination ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... 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
... 'singing-house' 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 ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... leaving Sidonie and 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. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... 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. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... like Deborah, Beat the tambourine and danced While she sang a hymn in praise Of the ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... some time aroused my curiosity. It was like no box I had seen before. But one afternoon Paragot took it down and extracted therefrom a violin which after tuning he began to play. Now although fond of music I have never been able to learn any instrument save the tambourine—my highest success otherwise has been to finger out "God save the Queen" and "We won't go home till morning" on the ocarina—and to this day a person able to play the piano or the fiddle seems possessed of an uncanny gift; but in that remote period ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... Great Music-master, went to Ch'i; Kan, the conductor at the second meal, went to Ch'u; Liao, the conductor at the third meal, went to Ts'ai; Chueeh, the conductor at the fourth meal, went to Ch'in. The drum master Fang-shu crossed the River; the tambourine master Wu crossed the Han; Yang the second bandmaster and Hsiang, who played the sounding stones, ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... principal characters had so greatly taken my fancy, that I could play the part perfectly from memory. In the mean time I asked her permission to take off my boots, otherwise I was not light enough for this character; and then taking up my broad hat for a tambourine, I began ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... slave he had brought with him to the pastry-cook's while Musli skipped homewards and brought with him a tambourine of chased silver, which he could beat right cunningly and also accompany it with a voice not without feeling; and thus Halil's bridal evening flowed pleasantly away with an accompaniment of wine and music ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... Caillette danced charmingly on the 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 was to be ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... 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 ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... A tambourine drops jinglingly. It is picked up. Baskets and hoe are resumed. The group starts towards background, leisurely, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... 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 ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... '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 have ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... 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
... Mistress" in black satin; Master Percy in cap and gown, Miss Isabel reclining in a hammock, Master Bunting and Miss Poppet in various stages of development. There was also a framed picture of "The House"; a tambourine painted with purple iris by Miss Isabel's own hands; an old bannerette in cross-stitch pendent from the mantelpiece, a collection of paper mats, shaded from orange to white, the glass-covered vase of wax flowers which had attracted ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... hung visibly in mid-air, and there was the empty seat of the man who was talking. Laura Filbert was one of the women. She might have been flung upon her chair; her head drooped over the back, buried in the curve of one arm. A tambourine hung loosely from the hand nearest her face; the other lay, palm outward in its abandonment, among the folds that covered her limbs. The folds hung from her waist, and she wore above them a short close bodice like a Bengali woman. Her ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... the responses, whenever the professor 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 for ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... wind instrument in shape like a flageolet, with three holes. It was played with the left hand, while the right beat a tambourine. It was ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... mode of dancing as well as I can:—They all get in a circle, while two sit down outside and play the tom-tom, a most unmelodious instrument, something like a tambourine, only not half so sweet; it is made in this way:—they take a hoop or the lid of a butter firkin, and cover one side with a very thin skin, while the other has strings fastened across from side to side, and upon this they ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... 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 ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... number of benches; and all who sat 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, ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of 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 ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... date at Hendon, Middlesex, is also to be commended. The lyre, cornet, and tambourine speak of music, and the figures of Fame and Hope are hardly to be misunderstood, but the large box in the background is not quite certain of ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... 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 ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... its immoderate repetition and its utter disregard of order and sequence. For the rest it is unedited and it strikes me as a sketch of adventure calculated to charm the Fellah-audience of a coffee-house, whose delight would be brightened by the normal accompaniment of a tambourine or a Rababah, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 is, I am ashamed of myself. ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... So that was 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 down into his lungs, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... 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 ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... 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 ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... Bacchus, in the parlour, make their libations of claret; and the young 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, to ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to seek me, red as the cherries that hung over my head or as the graceful knots of ribbon that tied the long braids of their hair, and made me compose couplets for them to sing to their sweethearts in the afternoon, to the sound of the tambourine, under the walnut trees where the young people danced and the elders chatted and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... approved D'Orsay fashion. Of course, it is impossible to come to any 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
... devote himself to it, but prefers with the expanding spring to lay aside his grimy basket, and, shouldering his organ, to quit the dismal wharves and carts and cellars, and to wander forth into the suburbs, with his lazy, soft-eyed boy at his heels, who does nothing with his tambourine but take up a collection, and who, meeting me the other day in a chance passage of Ferry Street, knew me, and gave me so much of ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... 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
... 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 listen ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... drank with them. They dressed with conspicuous abandon, in loud colors. Their faces were rouged. They ran in and out of the dance room with escorts or without, stood at the bar for drinks, entwined their arms with those of the men. In the dance room a band was playing. A man with a tambourine added to the hilarity of the music. It was a wild spectacle, unlike anything I had ever seen. No one accosted me. I could feel a different spirit in the crowd from that I had seen on the boats or in New York. There was no talk of politics, negroes, force bills. They did not seem to know or to ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... I'm 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. Jocko used ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... down by a rope, and Turk, as the wolf, had been imprisoned there since early morning, with Grip to keep him company. At last all was ready, and the orchestra opened the entertainment with "Hail Columbia" on the violin, by Tom, accompanied by the jews-harp, tambourine and triangle, and a flute which could only play two notes, but made up in power what it lacked in variety. Tom had tried hard to learn "Hail Columbia" for this occasion. He thought he knew it, and the family thought so too, from the amount of practising they had ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... gaze at them from morn till night, during which 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 capers, to show that not a bone of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... the faith. She loved best to swing herself into the saddle and gallop away over the plains. She would sing her glowing Spanish songs to the accompaniment of the mandolin; or else she would dance like a fairy, her foot scarce seeming to touch the floor as she floated along, to the sound of the tambourine played by her old negro duenna. She was too beautiful for him to restrain, in dancing, riding, or anything. Too beautiful!" he repeated, becoming more and more enthusiastic. "I have seen her often, when summoned to the plantation on professional duty as a physician; and there was ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument, while Kouidah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook the tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what ...
— Halima And The Scorpions - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... 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 life a ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... in Roman times played an important role in the worship of Isis, was shaped somewhat like a tennis racquet, with four wire strings on which rattles were strung. The sound of it must have been akin to that of our modern tambourine, and it served much the same purpose as the primitive drum, namely, to drive away Typhon or Set, the god of evil. Dead kings were called "Osiris" when placed in their tombs, and sistri put with them in order to ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... recesses of a dirty little theatre in the Batignolles, where Aristide performed such prodigies of repercussion that he was forthwith engaged to play the drum, the kettle-drum, the triangle, the cymbals, the castagnettes and the tambourine, in the orchestra of the Tournee Gulland at the dazzling salary ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... 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 great ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... scene a stack-stand, to the left a thrashing ground, to the right a barn. The barn doors are open. Straw is strewn about in the doorway. The hut with yard and out-buildings is seen in the background, whence proceed sounds of singing and of a tambourine. Two Girls are walking past the barn ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... 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
... the first time she sees you prancing up an' down the road tapping a tambourine, I can't think," ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... 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 yet ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... three children who stood between Growler and Prowler directly beneath him. When all was so quiet in the hall you could have heard a pin drop, the Chief cleared his throat and nodded to the Maltese pirate who stood ready to accompany him upon the tambourine. In the background a semicircle of other singers clutched their music and shuffled their feet rather nervously as they waited to ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... sweetest, most unworldly face, and yet, with it, an air of being on exhibition, of belonging to a troupe, of living in the gaslight, which pervaded even the details of her dress, fashioned evidently with an attempt at the histrionic. If she had produced a pair of castanets or a tambourine, he felt that such accessories would ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... in 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 ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... Have our children no rights? What is a train-ride with children without Hershey's charcoal bars? Or gypsum? What more picturesque on a ride through the country-side than a band of gypsum encamped by the road with their bright colors and gay tambourine playing? Are these simple folk to be kept out of this country simply because a Republican tariff insists on raising the ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... charmed with these verses and said to her, "By my life, O Naomi, sing to us with the tambourine and other instruments!" So she sang these couplets to a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... something about la vendemmia; and though Lucy had never learnt Italian, her wonderful dream knowledge made her sure that this meant the vintage, the grape-gathering; and presently there came along a little girl dancing and beating a tambourine, with a basket fastened to her back, filled to overflowing with big, beautiful bunches of grapes: and a whole party of other children, all loaded with as many grapes as they could carry, came leaping and singing after her; their black hair loose, or sometimes twisted ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 its appearing on inquiry ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... happened when the Prince rose and, taking a tambourine, began, with a weird shriek, to beat it wildly, his eyes ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... easily-contented race, forgetful of the past, 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 Africa. The air was at first low and monotonous, the time seeming to be more studied than ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... square, massive head, who had joined the party in the Louvre, ran forward and moved it round slightly. She was in Greek dress, and some yards away from her was the clay study—a maenad with vine wreath, tambourine, thyrsus, and floating ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... replied Chiquiznaque, "that such admonitions neither have been nor will be uttered for our benefit; otherwise, or if it should be imagined that they were addressed to us, the tambourine is in hands that would well know how ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... contrary, the performance of our prehistoric friends was governed and determined by ideas of grace, there were not infrequently from six to eight musical instruments, the harp, guitar, double-pipe, lyre, and tambourine of the period being most popular, and these commonly accompanied by a clapping of hands ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... sheer!" and muttering something about non compos mentis, the Lieutenant stalked away; while the Down Easter beat a melancholy retreat, holding up his pan like a tambourine, and making dolorous music ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... 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 ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... 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
... 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 of destiny ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... you've sung "God Save the Queen"— When you've finished killing Kruger with your mouth— Will you kindly drop a shilling in my little tambourine For a gentleman in kharki ordered South? He's an absent-minded beggar and his weaknesses are great— But we and Paul must take him as we find him— He is out on active service, wiping something off a slate— And he's left a lot o' ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... come, and welcome and fair cheer to thee, O Kut al-Kulub! Sit and divert us with thine art and the goodliness of thine accomplishments." Quoth the damsel, "I hear and I obey"; and, putting out her hand, took the tambourine, whereof one of its praisers speaketh in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... so it is," assented her husband, adjusting his eye-glass. "Pretty girl, though, that—in the front row with the tambourine." ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... of the Garhjat States. [371] By Buniya he 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 ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... now entered the 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 ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... 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 save the two ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... an organ-grinder who was playing close by. His dark Italian face looked sad and careworn, and the little girl beside him, evidently his daughter from the resemblance between them, looked so pale and feeble, that it seemed as if her little thin hands could scarcely support the tambourine she was ringing in accompaniment to a little plaintive song. Nelly enjoyed the performance exceedingly, but her admiration did not appear to be shared by those whose applause was of more consequence, for not a single penny found its way into the poor man's hat, either from the inmates of the ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... floor sang since I was knee high. In those long ago days a religious grandmother took me once to a Methodist summer camp meeting, at which time I resolved before my Maker to join the Salvation Army and beat a tambourine. So when Miss Cross asked me how I knew so many hymns, and the negro-revivalist variety, I answered that I once near joined the Salvation Army. "You don't say!" said ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... labours and are recreating with music and dancing. A group composed of two peasants and a like number of women occupies the foreground; one of the latter, attired in a blue mantle, is gaily striking a tambourine, and dancing to the music; her companion in a yellow dress sits near her; the shepherds also are seated, and one of them appears to have just ceased playing a pipe which he holds. The goats are browsing near them. Painted in the artist's most ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... priest, We'll laugh and 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 ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... 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
... from Raphael, he has nothing left but grace of detail. The intellectual feebleness of his style may be seen in many figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged around the walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse upon Parnassus is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of these subordinate compositions show power of conception ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... drawingroom, of course. [She goes out. Onward, Christian Soldiers, on the concertina, with tambourine accompaniment, is heard when the door opens]. ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... and 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 ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... noted that instruments of percussion are the natural exponents of such primitive music, and that, therefore, the East has its drum, gong and cymbals, Arabia its tambourine, Spain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... by the men in smoking, and relating their adventures, and by the women in singing and beating the tambourine, whilst my poor master and I were left to ponder over our forlorn situation. The mark of favour which I had just received had set my imagination to work, and led me to consider my condition as not entirely desperate. But ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... 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, ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... docile 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
... inexhaustible in its verbal diversity, but now, evidently, flattering and tender 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 ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... 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 to ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Popping corks resounded like the distant musketry of the crack sharp-shooters of the Devil's Own. Indeed, this was an ambuscade of the greatest, oldest, cruellest, most blood-thirsty conflict of civilized history—the War of the Roses—the Massacre of the Innocents! In Bobbie's ears the jangling tambourine, the weird splutterings of the banjos, the twanging of the guitars, the shrill music of the violins and clarionet, the monotonous rag-time pom-pom of the piano accompanist, the clash and bang of cymbal and ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... to complete the expected company, and to give the signal for "the opening of the ball," for before seats could be found for the elders of the party the musicians, consisting of two negro fiddlers, a tambourine and a banjo player, struck the stirring, old-fashioned tune of the "Fisher's Hornpipe." And gentlemen immediately took their partners—Mr. Force led out Mrs. Anglesea; Leonidas took Odalite; Ned and Sam Grandiere, Wynnette and Elva, ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... representing the head of a wolf double the ordinary size. Dried frogs and fish and snakes hung down from his neck, his whole body being concealed by skins. In one hand he carried a spear, ornamented with a variety of coloured feathers and snakes twisting up it, and in the other a sort of tambourine, from which also were hung snakes and frog-skins. He advanced, making a series of jumps and uttering wild yells accompanied by the rattling of his magic drum until, entering the circle, he approached his patient. ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... father and mother, what will you do?" He answered, "I will buy a slipper for you and a slipper for me, and we will play with them among the stones." "No," said she, "you are still too little," and waited a year before she asked him again. This time he answered, "I will buy a tambourine for you, and a flute for myself and we will play in the street." She waited two more years, and this time he answered, "We will use them to repair the water-wheels and my father's palaces, and we will sow and reap." "Now you are big," said she, and gave him the treasures, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... 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 ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving |
