"Castanets" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a moment too late. My hands were around the throat of Prince Ernst of Wortumborg, and I was shaking him till his teeth chattered on each other like castanets. Surely I would have throttled him but for the intervention of the Count and the cavalrymen. The Count swung his arm around my neck, while the cavalrymen, their sabre points at Hillars' breast, wrenched loose ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... bonbonnieres. Then come plaster or pasteboard gondolas, skiffs, wherries, steamships, and ferry-boats, all made with wondrous skill and freighted with caramels. Imitation rackets, battledoor and shuttlecock, hoops and sticks, castanets, cup and ball, tambourines, guitars, violins, hand-organs, banjos, and drums, all have their little day ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the young girl snapped her fingers together till they cracked like castanets; while her countenance, instead of expressing any very painful emotion, exhibited an air of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... and tinsel of all colours; she-devils or abducted shepherdesses in white and pink dresses; and at the head of them Lucifer himself, horned and, except the blood-red face, all black. The strange noise, however, turned out to be the rattling of castanets, and the terrible-looking figures a merry company of rich farmers and well-to-do villagers who were going to have a dance in Maria Antonia's cell. The orchestra, which consisted of a large and a small ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... been originally pressed. Through the open windows of various houses, glimpses were to be caught of the blue caps, strongly marked countenances, and fierce mustaches of the Carlist soldiers; their strangely-sounding Basque oaths and ejaculations mingling with the clack of the castanets and monotonous thrum of the tambourine, as they followed the sunburnt peasant girls through the mazes of the Zorcico, and other national dances. Hanging over the window-sills, or suspended from nails in the wall, were the belts, which the soldiers had profited by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... sacrificed him to her fame, had not the voice of Strap restrained my arm, it was with great difficulty he could pronounce, "D—d—d-do! mum—um—um—murder me if you please." Such an effect had the cold upon his jaws, that his teeth rattled like a pair of castanets. Pleased to be thus undeceived, I laughed at his consternation, and asked what brought him thither? Upon which he gave me to understand, that his concern for me had induced him to follow me to that place, where the same reason had detained him ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... one of the women. She was dressed as a Spanish dancer and in one hand held a tambourine and castanets. "They fight," she gave a little smirk of vanity, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... small, thin, and wiry, with the beak of a turkey-buzzard, the complexion of an Indian, and a set of large, white, very ill-fitting false teeth, which clicked like castanets whenever the old ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the Priapeia (XXVI) that cymbals and castanets were the special accompaniment in antiquity of wanton songs and dances: "cymbala, cum crotalis, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... sang agreeably; but, which appeared to me as ridiculous as indecent, she danced the ballet before a large company in her mother's house, in a costume almost as light as those of the opera, with castanets or tambourines, and ended her dance with a multiplicity of attitudes and graces. With such an education she naturally thought her position not at all unusual, and was very much chagrined at the short duration of her ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... its recipient, she lost no time in adopting it. As a preliminary, she went to Madrid. There, under expert tuition, she learned to rattle the castanets, and practised the bolero and the cachucha, as well as the classic arabesques and entrechats and the technique accompanying them. But she did not advance much beyond the simplest steps, for the time at her disposal was short, and the art of the ballerina is not to be ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... was slatting and flying out overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all over head was black with the flying scud. The English second mate was stamping with vexation, and, with all his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... the rattling of glass, nor the jarring sensation, nor yet the smoke and heat and lurid light. The walls shook with a dull vibration, and the window-panes were like castanets. Through the glass transom over the door I could see a shimmering, ruddy glow that rose and fell, and was brightened by bursting sparks and little darting tongues of yellow flame. Apart from this one lurid spot ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... a vengeance—for every little street arab had beef bones for castanets, and every new song was roared out in the streets until it nauseated. Punch drew policemen and dustmen as Ethiopian Serenaders, and even suggested that Lablache, Mario and Tamburini ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... happiness, any more than on the misery of others, with indifference, halted to enjoy this scene of simple pleasure. The group before him consisted of French and Spanish peasants, the inhabitants of a neighbouring hamlet, some of whom were performing a sprightly dance, the women with castanets in their hands, to the sounds of a lute and a tamborine, till, from the brisk melody of France, the music softened into a slow movement, to which two female peasants danced ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... pleasure, in the fashionable restaurants, where they gathered large sums, for it was a fashionable luxury to have them sing at the end of suppers, and everyone showered money on them in order not to be behind the others. They accompanied on guzlas, on castanets, on tambourines, and sang the old airs, doleful and languorous, or excitable and breathless as the flight of the earliest nomads in the beginnings of ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... thought she had been wounded, but it was only a graze above the near fore-fetlock. Ah, the dear little mare, how I loved her when I felt her settle down into that long, easy gallop of hers, her hoofs going like a Spanish girl's castanets. I could not hold myself. I turned on my saddle and shouted and raved, 'Vive l'Empereur!' I screamed and laughed at the gust of oaths ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... riding at the ring; none was more bold and dexterous in the bull-fight; none composed more gallant madrigals in praise of his lady's charms, or sang them with sweeter tones to the accompaniment of her guitar; nor could any one handle the castanets and dance the bolero with more captivating grace. All these admirable qualities and endowments, however, though they had been sufficient to win the heart of Serafina, were nothing in the eyes of her unreasonable father. O Cupid, god of ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... Smith, Smith and Smith, Solicitors) sat in his office awaiting his confidential clerk. There was a rattle as of castanets outside the door. It was produced by the teeth of the confidential clerk, ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... to which it has happened, Excellency," he said. "The padre say it is not the fault of any one, for the bush is high there, and who could see through them? But it is the snake—the one you say has the castanets in the tail, and it has put the poison in the foot of ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... afford to do what he wanted to. But now he wanted to go to that table and knock the heads of Cheever and Zada together; he wanted to make their skulls whack like castanets. But he could not afford to ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... farmer's wife singing; I hear in the distance the sounds of children, and of animals early in the day; I hear quick rifle-cracks from the riflemen of East Tennessee and Kentucky, hunting on hills; I hear emulous shouts of Australians, pursuing the wild horse; I hear the Spanish dance, with castanets, in the chestnut shade, to the rebeck and guitar; I hear continual echoes from the Thames; I hear fierce French liberty songs; I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems; ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Castanet, some, by the shrill ring of the sistrum,—which they held uplifted in the attitude of their own divine Isis,—harmoniously timed the cadence of their feet; while others, at every step, shook a small chain of silver, whose sound, mingling with those of the castanets and sistrums, produced a wild, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... Egypt's lakes, The silvery lotus in whose hue As much delight the young Moon takes As doth the Day-God to behold The lofty bean-flower's buds of gold. And, as they gracefully went round The worshipt bird, some to the beat Of castanets, some to the sound Of the shrill sistrum timed their feet; While others at each step they took A tinkling chain ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... adjoining the school grounds, keeping close to the boundary fence. It was as dark as pitch in the woods and every now and then one or another would walk into a tree or fall over a root. Don's teeth were chattering like castanets, for the night had grown cooler and a little breeze was blowing from the west, and his clothing was still far from dry. They crept past the back of the Cottage very cautiously, for there were lights upstairs and down, and breathed easier when the black ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... quality," he said, "he had acquired, while he filled a place at the bursar's table at the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen; when," said he; "if you did not move your jaws as fast as a pair of castanets, you were very unlikely to get any thing to put between them. And as for the quantity of my food, be it known to this honourable company," continued the Captain, "that it's the duty of every commander of a fortress, on all occasions which ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... nursery. Here is where you began to be a bad boy; and you began before you can remember. Did you never see these things before? They were your first soldiers—I have left them to Dent. And here are some of Dent's things that I have left to you. For one thing, his castanets. His father and I never knew why he cried for castanets. He said that Dent by all the laws of spiritual inheritance from his side should be wanting the timbrel and harp—Biblical influence, you ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... merchandise added immensely to the attraction of their market and drew a larger number, between buyers and curious people, than usual. When the day's business was over, they called for some musical instruments—the templanaste—and taking out their own castanets and timbrels, they ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... came out to cut thatch, not to chase deer and get lost in the woods," suggested Goodman trying to laugh, though his teeth chattered like castanets. ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... manner, until we got almost tired of the monotonous twang of the instruments, the drawling sounds which the women kept up, as an accompaniment, and the slapping of the hands in time with the music, in place of castanets. We found ourselves as great objects of attention as any persons or anything at the place. Our sailor dresses— and we took great pains to have them neat and ship-shape— were much admired, and we were invited, from every quarter, to give them an American dance; but after the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Herodotus (born 485 B.C.) tells us much about Egyptian music, how the great festival at Bubastis in honour of the Egyptian Diana (Bast or Pascht), to whom the cat was sacred, was attended yearly by 700,000 people who came by water, the boats resounding with the clatter of castanets, the clapping of hands, and the soft tones of thousands of flutes. Again he tells us of music played during banquets, and speaks of a mournful song called Maneros. This, the oldest song of the Egyptians (dating back to the first dynasty), was symbolical of the passing ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... it had been standing still. Trees, gates, cottages went dancing by. We heard the folks shouting from the fields, under the impression that we were a runaway. Faster and faster yet they raced, the hoofs rattling like castanets, the yellow manes flying, the wheels buzzing, and every joint and rivet creaking and groaning, while the curricle swung and swayed until I found myself clutching to the side-rail. My uncle eased them and glanced at his watch as we saw the grey tiles ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Seville or Madrid might love to lie and gaze at. She was a figure to look upon in silence. The dancing frenzy must have seized upon her while she was dressing; for she was in her bodice, bare-armed, her hair floating unbound far below the waist of her barred or banded skirt. She had caught up her castanets, and rattled them as she danced with a kind of passionate fierceness, her lithe body undulating with flexuous grace, her diamond eyes glittering, her round arms wreathing and unwinding, alive and vibrant to the ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... you to draw," said the major quite briskly. "I will shoot it out with you to see whether right or might shall control this convention." And his heels clicked together like castanets. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... together. Black has a wonderful power in softening down any intrusive brilliancy. It tones down scarlet and pink, blue and yellow, and gives them an indescribable charm, suggesting all kinds of pleasant things—the Cachuca and castanets, and the mantilla worn with such inimitable grace and coquetry by the Spanish ladies. Black and white is also a pleasing combination. White has generally the opposite effect of black. It adds to the brilliancy of the colours, and smartens rather than subdues. Many of those who aim at being well ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... place. All manner of rich goods were bought by the flushed soldiers, the high and the low. And there dwelled here a host of those who sold entertainment,—mummers and jugglers and singers, dwarfs and giants. Dice rattled, now there were castanets and dancing, and now church bells seemed to rock the place. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... pass the jutting cliff the lead-dog followed their course; Nick, on the right of them, moved wide, and craned to obtain a first view of the hut. Suddenly he gave a great shout. The dogs dropped in their harness and crouched, snarling and snapping, their jaws clipping together with the sound of castanets, whilst their wiry manes rose upon their shoulders bristling with ferocity which had in it something of fear. Ralph reached his brother's side ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... girl dancing; hold these slips of wood in your hand, they are supposed to be castanets; now just imagine that music is playing and that you are keeping time to it with them, and swaying your body, rather than moving ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... one gitano, an excellent dancer, to lead them. The others were all very well, but such was the elegance of Preciosa, that she fascinated the eyes of all the spectators. Amidst the sound of the tambourine and castanets, in the heat of the dance, a murmur of admiration arose for the beauty and grace of Preciosa; but when they heard her sing—for the dance was accompanied with song—the fame of the gitana reached its highest point; and ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the list which Leporello mockingly reads to her after Don Giovanni, having turned her over to his servant, for an explanation of his conduct in leaving Burgos, has departed unperceived. Leporello is worthy of his master in some things. In danger he is the veriest coward, and his teeth chatter like castanets; but confronted by a mere woman in distress he becomes voluble and spares her nothing in a description of the number of his master's amours, their place, the quality and station of his victims, and his methods of beguilement. The curious and also the emulous ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... hot, entrancing moons and bloomy, purple nights of Africa. She wanted the nomad's fires and the acid voices of the Kabyle dogs. She wanted the roar of the tom-toms, the dash of the cymbals, the rattle of the negroes' castanets, the fluttering, painted figures of the dancers. She wanted—more than she could express, more than she knew. It was there, want, aching in her heart, as she drew into her nostrils ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... but it isn't necessary. We're not to be nigger minstrels exactly. Coons are different. Of course, the songs are all about Sambos and Dinahs, but white people can sing them with quite as great effect. I believe the Bumble's got some castanets and things put ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... named for him, I suppose. Isaac Weight—the first one—was called Squash-nose at school, I remember. He wasn't popular, and I understand Ephraim, his son, wasn't either. They called him Meal-bag, and he looked it. Te-hee!" she laughed, a little dry keckle, like the click of castanets. "Did ever I tell you the trick your grandfather and my brother played on old Elder Weight and Squire Tree? That was great-grandfather to this present Weight boy, and uncle to my husband. The old squire was high in his notions, very high; he ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... base by birth. Another time, when the same religious was going barefoot, like the natives, because of the poor roads (for there is nothing good in these islands), their edification was to make a sound like castanets with the mouth, saying that he was a strong and brave man. Hence arose the saying that I heard from Father Bernabe de Villalobos, [33] a notable minister of the Bisayas, who labored many years in the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... went on, he was intrusted with the often needed miscellaneous musical instruments which form no part of the regular band of a boulevard theatre. For a very small addition to his stipend, Schmucke played the viola d'amore, hautboy, violoncello, and harp, as well as the piano, the castanets for the cachucha, the bells, saxhorn, and the like. If the Germans cannot draw harmony from the mighty instruments of Liberty, yet to play all instruments of music comes to ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... workman singing and the farmer's wife singing, I hear in the distance the sounds of children and of animals early in the day, I hear emulous shouts of Australians pursuing the wild horse, I hear the Spanish dance with castanets in the chestnut shade, to the rebeck and guitar, I hear continual echoes from the Thames, I hear fierce French liberty songs, I hear of the Italian boat-sculler the musical recitative of old poems, I hear the locusts in Syria as they strike the grain and grass with the showers ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... go to supper," she announced. "Form yourselves into a procession, children. Johnnie shall take this tambourine and Willy Parker these castanets, and we will march in to the ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... wilt hear nothing. It is this way. La Tulita have the castanets and just float up and down the sala, while all stand back and no breathe only when they shout. I am in the garden in the middle the house, and I stand on a box and look through the doors. Ay, the roses and the nasturtiums smell so sweet in that little garden! Well! She dance ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... painting by West, "Christ healing the Sick." We then visited the Musical Fund Hall, and heard the far-famed Ethiopian serenaders, Messrs. German, Hanwood, Harrington, Warren, and Pelham, upon the accordion, banjo, congo-tambo, and bone-castanets, in all of which they stand unrivalled in the world. They were representing Niggers' lives, with songs, &c. Home ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... a woman to be more ugly, with so fine a shape; but as a recompense, her ugliness was set off with every art. The use she was put to, was to dance with Flamarens, and sometimes, towards the conclusion of a ball, possessed of castanets and effrontery, she would dance some figured saraband or other, which amused the court. Let us now see in what manner ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Scarcely have they set foot within the breeding precinct, when fully half a score of old penguins rush fiercely at each of the intruders, with necks outstretched, mouths open, and mandibles snapping together with a clatter like that of castanets. ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... imitated by the music. All this was succeeded by vineyards, grape trellises, and arbors, with busy elves gathering the fruit which hung in purple clusters, and beneath the arbors other elves rattling castanets, ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... broke, on a sudden, into the beautiful and piquant air of Pedrillo, which he sang with a taste and spirit that made the assembled cavaliers gaze at him open-mouthed. At the same moment, a guitar and castanets were heard in the adjoining room, accompanying ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... are played over edge like our flutes. The "hellish harmonies" mostly result from an improvised band, one strumming the guitar, another clapping the sticks, and the third beating the bell-shaped irons that act as castanets. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... great bear, such a cheering and clapping began that they both looked around, half frightened; but the boys followed immediately and the Little Colonel, dressed as a flower girl, danced out to meet Keith, who came in clicking his castanets in time to Malcolm's whistling. The bear was made to go through all his tricks and his ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sealed to the walls; every shelf ornamented with one of those pink paper frills, cut in designs, which are manufactured in Spain and on which are printed, invariably, series of personages dancing with castanets, or scenes in the lives of the toreadors. In this white interior, before this joyful and clear chimney, one felt an impression of home, a tranquil welfare, which was augmented by the notion of the vast, wet, surrounding night, ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti |
