"Tambourine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wind, and flush'd limbs bare, And lips apart, and radiant eyes, And ears that caught the coming melodies, As wave on wave of revellers swept abroad; Wreathed with vine-leaves, shouting, trampling onwards, With toss'd timbrel and loud tambourine. ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... tambourine drops jinglingly. It is picked up. Baskets and hoe are resumed. The group starts towards background, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... nigh, conducted Aristide to the murky 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 of thirty francs ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... a scientific trade. It would be no more absurd to give an idiot a tambourine and call him a musician—he would be an idiot all the same. So with the clerk, the laborer, the hod-carrier, the teacher; he remains the same in spite of all the polished arms, resplendent uniforms, and pompous titles bestowed upon him. He remains just what ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... refreshments. She was just the little round, soft, dimpling, downy bundle of youth and love he so often saw in his mind's eye, and so rarely in reality, and he was ready to fall in love with any one. The mutual acquaintance was formed, as a matter of course, over the piece of gold he threw into the tambourine, from which, as she passed from table to table, she was able to measure her hearer's appreciation of art. Those were the days in which he first began to be able to dress well, and to have a little money to throw away. For ten days or a fortnight he threw it ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... distinctions in her individual world. But one short year ago she had followed a hand-organ man and a monkey to a point safely distant from too-observant relatives and servants; there, beside the chattering monkey, she had sung and danced and scrambled for pennies and shaken a tambourine, and generally conducted herself ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... ended in the sea—and shortly after four or five young girls came 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... cleared three pound twelve an' nine las' night—but 'ow? That Mortimer carried on something 'ateful. There was 'is wife—you wouldn' think it in ordinary life, but, dressed up, she goes to your 'eart; an' she wore, first an' last, more dresses than you could count. First of all she 'it a little tambourine, an' said she was a gipsy maid. 'I'm a narch little gipsy,' she said, 'an' ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... said he. "Them I-talian fellers is a bad lot; and I shouldn't wonder if he'd took off the child to learn her to play a tambourine, and go round picking up croppers for him. You'd better wait till morning; and, if they don't turn up, her mother can go and tell the chief ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... present, all the families round West Lynne will attend, and he will have the room full. They will go because we do—he said so. Make a sacrifice for once, dearest papa, and go, if it be only for an hour. I shall enjoy it if there's nothing but a fiddle and a tambourine." ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... whose style of dancing was a combination of that of all those countries through which their race had passed—Turkey, Bohemia, Egypt, Italy, and Spain. They were enlivened by the sound of cymbals, which clashed on their arms, and by the hollow sounds of the "daires"—a sort of tambourine played ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... 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, expelled it slowly, and went ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the tubes are already dropping out of their place; and as the eye follows them, it rests upon a number of other musical instruments lying on the ground,—the pipe, the violin, the tambourine, castanets, and others. It is as if we were shown the various instruments which she had set aside as not satisfying to her, and at last were shown her organ itself falling to pieces and dropping from her hands. So faint and imperfect, the painter seems to say, are all these forms ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... 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 base-drum, the coarse minor ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... 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 ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... purpose to England to congratulate me on such unparalleled achievements. But above all other rejoicings on my return, the musical oratorio and song of triumph were magnificent in the extreme. Gog and Magog were ordered to take the maiden tower of Windsor, and make a tambourine or great drum of it. For this purpose they extended an elephant's hide, tanned and prepared for the design, across the summit of the tower, from parapet to parapet, so that in proportion this extended elephant's hide was to the whole of the castle what the parchment is to a drum, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... percussion stops: Chimes, Chrysoglott, Glockenspiel, Electric Bells (with resonators), Xylophone, and carefully-tuned Sleigh Bells—in addition to single percussive instruments, such as Snare-drum, Bass-drum, Kettle-drum, Tambourine, Castanets, Triangle, Cymbals, and ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... 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 ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... wanting. The fact is, we have long passed the days when "rinking" was a novelty on the stage or off it. But what a jolly lot these Anabaptists were! They enjoyed themselves with their dancing-girls and their picnicking on the ice. Substitute General BOOTH for Jean of Leyden, and the tambourine girls for PALLADINO and the ballet, and then you have a modern ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... little figure who stood by the 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 great ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... 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 ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... amused himself with Torriano in making little puppets,—soldiers that would go through their exercises, dancing tambourine-girls, etc. It is even asserted that they constructed birds that would fly in and out of the window, a story rather difficult to accept. The monks began to look upon Torriano as a professor of magic when he invented a handmill small enough to be hidden in a friar's sleeve, yet capable ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... shall be. (Caressing her.) Are you content now? There! There!—not these frightened dove's eyes! The whole thing is only the wildest fancy!—Now, you must go and play through the Tarantella and practise with your tambourine. I shall go into the inner office and shut the door, and I shall hear nothing; you can make as much noise as you please. (Turns back at the door.) And when Rank comes, tell him where he will find me. (Nods to her, takes his papers and goes into his room, and shuts ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... Egyptian. They had no other instrumental music but by percussion, of which the greatest boast was made of the psaltery,—a small triangular harp, or lyre, with wire strings, and struck with an iron needle or stick. Their sackbut was something like a bagpipe; the timbrel was a tambourine; and the dulcimer, a horizontal harp with wire strings, and struck with a stick like ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... given to harmless pranks withal. Between the long church services, if she went into the country with girls of her own age, she made no fuss about doing as they did, but would sing and dance away and flourish her tambourine. But such days were few. Most times her chief delight was to climb up to the top of the house, to bring herself nearer heaven, to obtain a glimpse of daylight, to look out, perhaps, on some small strip of sea, or some pointed peak in the vast wilderness ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... it has no nest; Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed, Nor tambourine, nor man; It is not hymn from pulpit read, — The morning stars the treble led On ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... all! I see it all!" shouted Evelyn, suddenly springing up and whirling about the room, using her letters as a tambourine. "It's ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... certain 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, nowhere, ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wall now peers through. The lazzarone sleeps under the arcade, whose pavement in old times was to be trodden only by the feet of high nobility. From the deep wells, and perhaps from the prisons by the Bridge of Sighs, rise the accents of woe, as at the time when the tambourine was heard in the gay gondolas, and the golden ring was cast from the Bucentaur to Adria, the queen of the seas. Adria! shroud thyself in mists; let the veil of thy widowhood shroud thy form, and clothe in the weeds of woe ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... large fireplace with a kettle to correspond, round which the working men have congregated time out of mind on a winter's night, refreshed by draughts of good strong beer, and cheered by the sounds of a fiddle and tambourine: the Jolly Boatmen having been duly licensed by the Mayor and corporation, to scrape the fiddle and thumb the tambourine from time, whereof the memory of the oldest inhabitants goeth not to the contrary. Now Nicholas Tulrumble had been reading pamphlets on crime, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... pass through the air, vivifying, healthier than those of May, having the odor of hay and the odor of flowers. Two singers of the highway are there, leaning on the graveyard wall, and they intone, with a tambourine and a guitar, an old seguidilla of Spain, bringing here the warm and somewhat Arabic gaieties of the lands beyond ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... been military material. Perhaps the vicissitudes of my life have made me insensible to what are called reverses of fortune, for, when a child, I remember sleeping on the moonlit flags of Paris, with no pillow except my tambourine; and I remember it not without delight. Let us sit down. I feel I am talking in an excited, injudicious, egotistical, rhapsodical, manner. I thought I was calm, and I meant to have been clear. But the fact is, I am ashamed of myself. I am doing a wrong thing, and in a wrong manner. But I ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Elvira delights them with a song, a vocal scherzo ("Yes, I'll obey you"). The innkeeper is rude to them, but they are protected from his coarseness by Manuel, the muleteer, who suddenly appears and sings a rollicking song ("I am a simple Muleteer") to the accompaniment of a tambourine and the snappings of his whip. A dialogue duet follows, in which she accepts his protection and escort. She has already recognized the Infant, and he has fulfilled the motive of the story by falling ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... shall go joyfully round, With love and good humour the room shall resound. The slipper be hid—the stocking let fall, And rare blindman's-buff shall keep up the ball; Whilst the merry spinette, and the sweet tambourine, Shall heighten and perfect the gay festive scene. Such mirth and such rapture never were known, I'm surprised that so long you will tarry; I prithee, Ulrica—prithee, come down; For the sport of all sports ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... 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
... and gave the signal: "Fire a volley!" Whereupon his troops gave a tremendous cheer, followed by a roll of drums and a blast of trumpets. The chief agency which the army employs to gather its audiences is music—whether it be the rattling of the tambourine, or the martial sound of a brass band. Some of their hymns are little better than pious doggerel, and they do not hesitate to add to Perronet's grand hymn, "All hail the power of Jesus name," such a ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... 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 ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... 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. ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... master, Ursus, had always been to them an enigma. Never to be understood is a reason for being always obeyed. They simply thought he had gone mad, and did as they were told. Fibi took down the costume, and Vinos the tambourine. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... doing the duties of clerk and making 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
... given more, but off and away she went With her baby and her pink sham flowers to rejoin The rest before I could translate to its proper coin Gratitude for her grace. And I paid nothing then, As I pay nothing now with the dipping of my pen For her brother's music when he drummed the tambourine And stamped his feet, which made the workmen passing grin, While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally Bacchanal dance "Over the hills and far away." This and his glance Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer, Cheap-jack, balloon-man, ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... of the walrus. Monotonous incantations take the place of the white 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 ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... well as children use the drum or tambourine in their games. They are fond of notching the edges of two bits of whalebone, and whirling them round their heads to make a humming sound, just as English boys do; and they also make toys like wind-mills, with arms to turn round with ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... a distinct spirit for every disease and he must be propitiated in a particular manner. While practicing his profession the shaman contorts his body and dances like one insane, and howls worse than a dozen Kamchadale dogs. He is dressed in a fantastic manner and beats a tambourine during his performance. To accommodate himself to the different spirits he modulates his voice, changes the character of his dance, and alters his costume. Both doctor and patient are generally decked with wood-shavings while the work is ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... inn-doors, attract the fiddler, and he strolls on his own account, when the payment of salaries is suspended. A veteran actor was wont to relate his experiences of fifty years ago as a member of the Stratford-upon-Avon company, when the orchestra consisted only of a fife and a tambourine, the instrumentalists performing, as they avowed, "not from notes but entirely by ear." Presently the company removed to Warwick for the race week. But here the managerial difficulties increased—no band ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... orchestral music is really wonderfully rascally and impudent, horns gleeful and windy and insolent, wood-wind puckish and obscene. Here a musical form reels hilariously and cuts capers and dances on bald heads. The variation of "Don Quixote" that describes with wood-wind and tambourine Dulcinea del Toboso is plump and plebeian and good-natured with her very person, is all the more trenchantly vulgar and flat for the preceding suave variation that describes the knight's fair, sonorous dream of her. There is no music more plaintively ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... the 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
... of timbrel, a rustic musical instrument made of a thin strip of wood about four inches wide brought round in the shape of a tube or drum, and having small metal discs fixed in holes at regular intervals like those of a tambourine. It is generally held in the right hand and ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... with these verses and said to her, "I conjure thee, by my life, O Num, sing to us with the tambourine and other instruments!" So she sang the following verses ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... market place to-day I found such a bored old bear dancing for a bored crowd. I've never seen anything quite so tired and patient as his eyes. His little old master was half asleep but he whacked his tambourine and whined his mournful song without a pause. I left Lupe and the C.E. and went out and patted the bear and asked the man (I am as handy as that with my Spanish!) how much he earned in a day. Less than fifteen cents in our money! Well, I asked him if I could buy the bear a week's vacation if I ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... was Daniel Steibelt, forgotten as a virtuoso, but not to be forgotten for his splendid vices which range from kleptomania up, or down as you wish. He married a young and beautiful woman, who doubtless deserved her fate, since we are told that she was a wonderful performer on the tambourine. He succeeded to the post of Boieldieu, the eminent opera composer, who began life under poor matrimonial auspices, seeing that his mother was a milliner, from whom his father managed to escape by means of an easy divorce law issued ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... crew. A big landsman from Utica, and a dare-devil topman from Cape Cod, are the leading vocalists; Symmes, the ship's cook, plays an excellent violin; and the commodore's steward is not to be surpassed upon the tambourine. A little black fellow, whose sobriquet is Othello, manages the castanets, and there is a tolerable flute played by one of the afterguard. The concerts usually commence with sentimental songs, such as "Home, sweet Home," and the Canadian Boat Song: but the comic always ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... that may claim a votary. Of viols, from the violin to the double bass,—of instruments of brass, from trombones and bass kettledrums even unto trumpet and cymbal,—of instruments of wood, from winding serpents to octave flute,—and of fiddles of parchment, from the grosse caisse to the tambourine. Nor were ancient instruments wanting. These were of quaint forms and diverse constructions. Mr. Graeme would descant for hours on an antique species of spinnet, which he procured from the East, and which he vehemently averred, was ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... I hear the merry jingle of the tambourine, and the cheery voices of the girls and peasants, as they dance beneath my casement, under the shadow of the clustering vines. The laugh and song pass gayly round, and even at this distance I can distinguish the elegant form of Ramon Cabrera, as he whispers ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tolerably certain, however, that their mother was not aware they were out, otherwise small Bob would doubtless have had no farther rolling of marbles in those parts; no riding of my little gray all over town 'just to air him' as he said; no running for Massalini, the triangle and the tambourine, for our evening dances. They were not very lively, being, as I have stated, almost gone with grief or pain, one could hardly tell which, not being acquainted with their manner of expression. Placed upon the ground, they were quite still and speechless; no throbbings ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... or drawn by entreaty back amongst them; she set her delicate pearly teeth tight, and vowed with a reckless, contemptuous, impetuous oath that she was tired; that she was sick of them; that she was no strolling player to caper for them with a tambourine; and with that declaration made her way out alone into the little open court under the stars, so cool, so still after the heat, and riot, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... his indignation lent such force to the gesture with which he put on his hat that the impact sounded like a blow on a tambourine. ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... 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, ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... under a spreading palm-tree, to enjoy the pleasing spectacle of this negro festival. His negroes were all well clad, and in the gayest colours, and their merry countenances suited the gaiety of their dress. While some were dancing, and some playing on the tambourine, others appeared amongst the distant trees, bringing baskets of avocado pears, grapes, and pine-apples, the produce of their own provision-grounds; and others were employed in spreading their clean trenchers, or the calabashes, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... instant, until satisfied she was observed by all, she began a slow and stately dance, timing her steps to the soft jingle of her tambourine. The girl had a lithe gracefulness and stately bearing unusual in those of her class—whose exhibitions were rather of the fast and furious kind with a liberal display of their forms—and when with a last low curtsy she ended, there ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... in the evening came to a beautifully green spot, refreshed by flowing rivulets, where he found, to his surprise, a ready-roasted deer, and some bread and salt. He alighted, and sat down near the enchanted provisions, which vanished at the sound of his voice, and presently a tambourine met his eyes, and a flask of wine. Taking up the instrument he played upon it, and chanted a ditty about his own wanderings, and the exploits which he most loved. He said that he had no pleasure in banquets, but only in the field fighting with heroes and ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... rather than of a representation. A woman in a voluminous white silk dress and a black mantilla pirouettes in the middle of a dusky room, to the accompaniment of her own castanets and that of a row of men and women who sit in straw chairs against the whitewashed wall and thrum upon guitar and tambourine or lift other castanets into the air. She appears almost colossal, and the twisted and inflated folds of her long dress increase her volume. She simpers, in profile, with a long chin, while she slants back at ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... impressive it is to stand in an empty sanctuary in the house divine of "the Hidden One," whom the nations of the world worship, whether they spread their robes on the sand and turn their faces to Mecca, or beat the tambourine and sing "glory hymns" of salvation, or flagellate themselves in the night before the patron saint of the Passionists, or only gaze at the snow-white plume that floats from the snows of Etna under the rose of dawn, and feel the soul behind Nature. Among the temples of Egypt, Edfu is the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... IV.4: Priests of 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. 149, of ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... heads with a dolorous rattle. The gentleman who moved the mechanism was a sacristan in red cotton drawers and a lace cassock, who sat in full view in the niche behind the high altar. There seemed to be a spirited rivalry between him and the tambourine artists as to which could contribute the most noise, and I think a fair judge would have granted it ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... having been covered with tapestries. The tarsie showed "emblematic representations of music, literature, physical science, geography, and war; bookcases, or rather cupboards, with their contents, among which were a ship, a tambourine, military weapons, a cage with a parrot in it, and as if for the sake of variety only, a few volumes of books, over one of which, containing music, with the word 'Rosabella' inscribed on its pages, was suspended a crucifix. On the central case opposite the window, and occupying as it were the place ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... side. Cheerfulness. A woman with long flowing hair, crowned with roses, playing on a tambourine, and with open lips, as ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... silver or bronze, and even of porcelain, beautifully engraved, one of which was exclusively reserved for the master of the house. While at dinner the party were enlivened with musical instruments, the chief of which were the harp, the lyre, the guitar, the tambourine, the pipe, the flute, and the cymbal. Music was looked upon by the Egyptians as an important science, and was diligently studied and highly prized; the song and the dance were united with the sounds of musical instruments. Many of the ornamented vases and other vessels used by the Egyptians ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... is heard no more on all the Bar, and silence reigns through the calico halls of the Humboldt. His bland smile and his dainty plats, his inimitably choice language and his pet tambourine, his woolly corkscrew and his really beautiful music, have, I fear, ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... the criticism with easy indifference, and her fair, dissipated face was only twisted in a grimace, while she held one hand aloft and jingled the bangles on her bracelets as though poising a tambourine. ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Edgeworth excelled me so much, that I sat down upon the ground, and burst out a-crying; he could actually complete an entrechat of ten distinct beats, which I could not accomplish! However, I was well consoled by him; for he invented, for Aldridge's benefit, The Tambourine Dance, which had uncommon success. The dresses were Chinese. Twelve assistants held small drums furnished with bells; these were struck in the air by the dancer's feet when held as high as their arms could reach. This Aldridge performed, ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... had no occupants. On the floor lay a skeleton doll, a toy tambourine, a whipping-top, and a wried tin whistle. There was one bedstead, and a bed made up on a mattress laid on the floor. On a round clothless table stood two plates, one with a piece of bread and butter remaining, and two cups and saucers. The ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... suddenly heard the voice of our servant, Vassily, a young man of free and easy manners, "a lazy fellow and a scamp," as my father called him, but also a great conqueror of female hearts which he charmed by his wit, his dancing and his playing on the tambourine. ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... gulf, the admiral had sought to make friends with some Indians who approached him in a large canoe, by ordering his men to come upon the poop, and dance to the sound of a tambourine; but this, naturally enough, appears to have been mistaken for a warlike demonstration, and it was answered by a flight of arrows ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... dishes cleared, an amateur luti from among the villagers produces a tambourine and castanets, and, taking the middle of the room, proceeds to amuse the company by singing extempore love songs in praise of the bride and groom to tambourine accompaniment and pendulous swayings of the body. Pretending to be carried away by the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... music supplies, From his hurdy-gurdy the waltz is sublime; His fair daughter Rosa, whose tambourine flies, Is merrily thumping the rollicking time; The Widow McCann pats the tune with her slipper, The peanut-man hums as he peers from his stall, And Officer Quinn for a moment looks in To see the new steps at ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Michelangelo had not seen those frescoes of the dancing Bacchantes from Pompeii; nor had he perhaps seen the Maenads on Greek bas-reliefs tossing wild tresses backwards, swaying virginal lithe bodies to the music of the tambourine. We must not, therefore, compare his concept with those masterpieces of the later classical imagination. Still, many of his contemporaries, vastly inferior to him in penetrative insight, a Giovanni da Udine, a Perino del Vaga, a Primaticcio, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... 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 ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... private Bodies of Citizens, from the highest to the lowest, march; the very Hawkers, one finds, have ceased bawling for one day. The neighbouring Villages turn out: their able men come marching, to village fiddle or tambourine and triangle, under their Mayor, or Mayor and Curate, who also walk bespaded, and in tricolor sash. As many as one hundred and fifty thousand workers: nay at certain seasons, as some count, two hundred and fifty thousand; for, in the afternoon ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... attracted her notice was a group of dancers on the terrace below, led by a guitar and some other instruments. The girl, who struck the guitar, and another, who flourished a tambourine, passed on in a dancing step, and with a light grace and gaiety of heart, that would have subdued the goddess of spleen in her worst humour. After these came a group of fantastic figures, some dressed as gondolieri, others as minstrels, while others ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... accompanied himself, in dancing, with castanets. Corinne before she began saluted the assembly most gracefully with both her hands, then turning round upon her heel took the tambourine which the Prince Amalfi presented her with. She then began to dance, striking the air upon the tambourine, and there was in all her motions, an agility, a grace, a mixture of modesty and voluptuousness, which might give an idea of that power which the Bayadores exercise over the imagination ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... too evidently tours de force. It was always interesting to watch his audience, when, upon being recalled, he began one of the West Indian strains. There was a minor monotonous theme in them which fascinated the listeners. They heard the beat of the tambourine, and saw the movement of the dance, and with them all the characteristic scenery and association of the tropics filled their imaginations. The languid grace, the rich indolence, the gay profusion of the lands where the banana grows, they ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... 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
... 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 head covering had slipped, and clung only to the ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... 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 ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... Nismes and Lunel, where is the best Muscatto wine in all France: the sun was set, they had done their work; the nymphs had tied up their hair afresh, and the swains were preparing for a carousal. My mule made a dead point. ''Tis the pipe and tambourine,' said I—'I never will argue a point with one of your family as long as I live;' so leaping off his back, and kicking off one boot into this ditch and t'other into that, 'I'll take a dance,' said I, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... organized forms the spiritual powers thus aggregated and organized become an efficient spiritual energy; and the higher the organism the grander the power that is developed, man being the most perfect organization evolves the grandest spiritual power, as a superior violin evolves finer music than a tambourine. But the intelligence and will of man are only phenomena, like the music, and have no existence beyond that of the organism that produces them. This is substantially the theory of materialists generally, and of the old school medical colleges which consider human ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... 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
... wear a velvet bodice and a green skirt with a yellow border. I want to dance the tarantella with a tambourine in ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... can be placed. A well-known missionary of the Episcopal Methodist Church in Oude has been lately pursuing the tactics of the Salvation Army. Accompanied by a band of native Christians, he has been entering villages and towns with song and drum and tambourine. The people in crowds have gathered round him. He and his brethren have preached Christ to them, have urged them to accept Him as their Saviour, and have given on the spot baptism, chin—the mark of the Christian Church, to any avowing their ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... single pipe, (a) "The recorder" in the British Museum, is a treble of 10-1/2 in. and is pentaphonic, like the Scotch scale; the tenor (b) is 8-3/4 in. long and its present pitch— the guitar, the tambourine, the castanets, the cymbals, the tambour, and sometimes ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... And while I was waiting for the next I must 'a' et something poison. I was awful sick. I guess it was ten days or so before I come to enough to know where I was. I've had hard luck, bo—I'll say I have. I was robbed while I was sick, and only for a tambourine queen I got acquainted with, I guess I'd 'a' died. They're treacherous as hell, though. Long as she thought I had money—oh, well, they's no use expecting kindness in this world. Or gratitude. I'm always helpin' folks out and gittin' kicked and cussed for my pay. Lookit the way I lived ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... meant the Bhunjia tribe of Raipur, who as already stated are an offshoot of the Baigas. Colonel Dalton describes the dances of the Bhuiyas of Chota Nagpur as follows: [372] "The men have each a wide kind of tambourine. They march round in a circle, beating these and singing a very simple melody in a minor key on four notes. The women dance opposite to them with their heads covered and bodies much inclined, touching each other like soldiers in line, but not holding hands or wreathing arms like the Kols." ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... there were any instruments in the house. The ladies were delighted at the idea, and Sadie went to see what she could find, returning in a few moments laden with two different kinds of flutes and a tambourine. Each Calender took the one he preferred, and began to play a well-known air, while the ladies sang the words of the song. These words were the gayest and liveliest possible, and every now and then the singers had to stop to indulge the laughter which almost ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... there came along an ugly old woman with a tambourine and a one-legged man with a guitar, and seeing prey in the shape of Caper at his window, they pounced on him, as it were, and poured forth the most ear-rending discord; the old lady singing, the old gentleman backing up against a wall ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and other great departed whose names are taken in vain every day by small-bore politicians, do not return and whack these persons over the heads with a tambourine, is almost—as Anatole France remarked in an essay on Flaubert—is almost an argument against ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... 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 ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... tambourine Shall grace its wall, And many a table small And folding screen Shall on its floor ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... found had with him a little Italian girl with a red silk handkerchief knotted about her head. She sang and played on a tambourine, and Gabriel persuaded his companion to watch and listen ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... share it, Nora, as man and wife should. That is how it shall be. (Caressing her.) Are you content now? There! There!—not these frightened dove's eyes! The whole thing is only the wildest fancy!—Now, you must go and play through the Tarantella and practice with your tambourine. I shall go into the inner office and shut the door, and I shall hear nothing; you can make as much noise as you please. (Turns back at the door.) And when Rank comes, tell him where he will find me. (Nods to her, takes ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... that came to the boys crouching behind the rock was a dead thump near their heads. An uprooted tree had been hurled from some point above, like an enormous spear, and, striking the rock at a slant, slid over the rough surface like the finger of a player over the face of a tambourine and out beyond, hunting for some spot where it could penetrate. It found it on the ground, but it was instantly wrenched loose by the resistless power that had first thrown it forward, and went end over end into the general ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... be religion; it may utter misleading or nonsensical words and yet intend and convey the truth. The methods of the Salvation Army are older than doctrinal Christianity, and may long survive it. Men and women may still chant of Beulah Land and cry out in the ecstasy of salvation; the tambourine, that modern revival of the thrilling Alexandrine sistrum, may still stir dull nerves to a first apprehension of powers and a call beyond the immediate material compulsion of life, when the creeds of Christianity are as dead as the lore ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... Esquimos are few. Tests of strength and endurance occur between the men of the tribe; and visits are paid to the various settlements, during the long winter nights; and songs and choruses are sung, accompanied by a kind of tambourine which is made from the bladder of a walrus or seal, and stretched across ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... 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
... their thousands on market-place, or green, With blatant brazen brayings, and thump of tambourine. Are you at prayer, asleep or sick? What odds? You're forced to list To the tow-row, tow-row, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... not the old Iambe, who with this wild music, heard thus for the first time, makes Demeter smile at last. "Great," so the chorus ends with a picture, "great is the power of the stoles of spotted fawn-skins, and the green leaves of ivy twisted about the sacred wands, and the wheeling motion of the tambourine whirled round in the air, and the long hair floating unbound in honour of Bromius, and the nocturns of the goddess, when the ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... my hand out of the current; but I did not dare to interfere with it, and I continued to hold on to the jelly. Whoever was being materialized was doing it so slowly, and without any kind of system, that we hardly had the patience to sit it out. Then a tambourine walked up some one's arm, Prince Nassau's spectacles were pulled off his august nose by invisible hands (of course, who else would have dared?), thus making him more near-sighted than ever. His wife's necklace of turquoises was unclasped from ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... all glances were riveted, all mouths open; and, in fact, when she danced thus, to the humming of the Basque tambourine, which her two pure, rounded arms raised above her head, slender, frail and vivacious as a wasp, with her corsage of gold without a fold, her variegated gown puffing out, her bare shoulders, her delicate limbs, which her petticoat ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... 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 ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... myself clown in an arm-chair near the window, and watched the white-sailed boats skimming like flecks of silver across the blue-green water. The tinkling of a tambourine by and by attracted my wandering attention, and looking into the street just below my balcony I saw a young girl dancing. She was lovely to look at, and she danced with exquisite grace as well as modesty, but the beauty of her face was not so much caused by perfection ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... somewhat narrow. It is only in the case of the nations which are distinctly unmusical that it is entirely easy to recall their peculiarities, and the features by means of which this is usually done amount to parody. For example, when it is a question of something Turkish, much is made of the tambourine, the cymbals, and the fife. In something Persian or Arabic, the triangle cuts quite a figure; but when it is a question between composers of the civilized countries of Europe, music has become a cosmopolitan language among them all, and only a small ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... into place. It was a pretty little figure of a dancing girl with a tiny tambourine in her uplifted hand. She whirled and turned and the little tambourine gleamed and sparkled. Jardin took careful aim at the tambourine and missed. Three times he missed, the boys exclaiming that no one could hit anything so delicate. Finally he gave it up, giving a number of explanations why ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb
... youth he had met several times at Can Mallorqui, the house of his old renter, Pep. Resting on his thigh was the Ivizan tambourine, a small drum painted blue, decorated with flowers and gilded branches. His left arm was resting on the instrument, his chin in his hand, almost concealing his face. He beat the drum slowly with a little stick held in his right hand, and he sat motionless, in a ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... up from the host of Israel. Moses led them in a song of praise, and Miriam, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine, and the women followed her in dances as they answered in a ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... the noise of 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
... the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand; and as all the women followed her with tambourines and with dancing, she ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... of a naked Hermaphroditus. In his right hand is a little torch reversed; his left arm rests on the shoulders of Silenus, who appears to accompany his songs on the lyre, whilst a winged Cupid sounds the double flute. On the other side is a Bacchante with a thyrsus and tambourine, and near her a little Satyr, who also holds ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... another silent solo, this time on the tambourine, which the boy pretended to beat with frantic energy, ending by going on tiptoe to peep through the keyhole, and satisfy himself that the doctor ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn |
