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More "Castanets" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of his earliest proclamations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for nothing else, unless it be its waxen and bejeweled Saint in a glass case, with two odd hands; or the enormous number of beggars who are constantly rapping their chins there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral with the beautiful door, and the columns of African and Egyptian granite that once ornamented the temple of Apollo, contains the famous sacred blood of San Gennaro or Januarius, which is preserved ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... way stood merchants' booths, each with a goodly crowd. Now a herd of brown goats came, the offering of a pious Phocian; now a band of Aphrodite's priestesses from Corinth whirled by in no overdecorous dance, to a deafening noise of citharas and castanets. A soft breeze was sending the brown-sailed fisher boats across the heaving bay. Straight before the three spread the white stuccoed houses of Cenchraea, the eastern haven of Corinth; far ahead in smooth ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... incense burn, and all the people stand in reverence along the route. A bullfight is usually a feature of a saint's day too, with the whole town going to the Plaza de Toros to watch. The paseo will be especially gay at fiesta time, and as darkness falls, the guitars will start to twang, castanets will click and all the young people will gather in the main square to take part in folk dances until morning. Sometimes the saint's fiesta will last a whole week, with bullfights every afternoon and a fair ...
— Getting to know Spain • Dee Day
... to the arctic circle. They swung at corners and made "ladies' change" all through the temperate zone. They stamped their feet and did double-shuffles until the floor trembled beneath them. The tin lamp-reflectors on the walls rattled like castanets. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... dance between the acts, with castanets, to another place of amusement, the Teatro Tagalo de Tonda (where the performance was in the Indian tongue), which is of a less imposing style, but where they ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... the door, then shrank back. Leaning against the jamb was the Russian. His manner had changed subtly. His thin lips spread from ear to ear in a wolfish grin. His fingers clicked like castanets. ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... Ida, it was Cybele traveling about in her car drawn by roaring lions mourning her lover's death. A crowd of worshipers followed her through woods and thickets, mingling their shouts with the shrill sound of flutes, with the dull beat of tambourines, with the rattling of castanets and the dissonance of brass cymbals. Intoxicated with shouting and with uproar of the instruments, excited by their impetuous advance, breathless and panting, they surrendered to the raptures of a sacred enthusiasm. ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... one the houses around were illuminated. Parties of simple musicians began to pass each other continually—they were going to serenade the blessed Mary all night long. As Antonia closed the balcony window, half a dozen of these young boys passed the garden hedge singing to the clacking of their castanets— ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... I expected to hear your teeth chattering together like castanets. I expected to feel your body shaking, as if with a ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... pleasure to serve you, madam,' it went on, 'and everything you want we shall be delighted to get for you; in the meantime we will play for you and dance so that you will have plenty to make you happy.' And they all began to dance and sing, and play on castanets and tambourines. ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... Landi, as if to himself. 'Ole! ole! Does she use the castanets, and wear a mantilla instead ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... the rushing wind bore down to them a weird, dismal howl that in Perkins's ears met every ghostly requirement. His teeth began to chatter like castanets, and snatching his jug of corn whiskey he ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Paddy ran over the road to his cousin's. Western clouds were blackening and his little cousin was pulling the pig into the cabin as a man puts other sort of treasure out of danger into a safe. Paddy listened a moment. He could hear the castanets of the tweed weaver's loom and the hum of his uncle's deep voice as he sang at his work. He ran to the rear of the cabin and up the stone steps to the little addition. A lantern filled the room he entered with ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... of drums, castanets, bells, fiddles; many of them having strange shapes and shrill noises. Funny, fat-cheeked boys were blowing the very life out of the ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... 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
... before it decides what regiment it will join. Valentine had never decided to join any regiment. The trumpets of vice rang in his ears in vain, mingled with the more classical music of his life as the retreat from the barracks of Seville mingled with the click of Carmen's castanets. But he heeded them not. If he listened to them sometimes, it was only to wonder at the harsh and blatant nature of their voices, only to pity the poor creatures who hastened to the prison, which youth thinks freedom and old age ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... did not, his visit to the wonderful show must be postponed indefinitely. He strove like a hero, and was actually sick several hours before the watchful eyes of his mother and aunt discovered his plight. The moment came when he could hold out no longer, with his teeth rattling like castanets, and his red face so hot that it was painful to the touch. Since the performance did not open until two o'clock in the afternoon, he did not as yet ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... girl was a good musician, and 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... carelessly, as if already weary. Above her head she swung copper bells, castanets or 'crotals,'—swung them lazily, so that they tinkled very faintly. Gradually her movements became more emphatic, and suddenly under their long lashes, yellow eyes shone out, clear and bright as ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... them all up wherever she goes; and such a dancer; did the cachouka with a little Spanish bloke Bosanquet has got hold of, and made his black bolus eyes twinkle like midnight cigars: danced it with castanets, and smiles, and such a what d'ye call 'em, my boy, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... him his quarters. They were not, it seemed, upon this floor, nor the next below—no, but on the next below that. Signor Francesco must follow her as, lamp in hand, she went downstairs, her high heels clattering like Spanish castanets. She opened his door with a key which she then handed over to him: she showed him his bedroom, his saloon. "Your citadel, Don Francis," she said, "your refuge from my heedless tongue. Your chocolate shall be brought to you here, but we hope you will give yourself the trouble to dine with us. ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... of her tastes already known to the reader, that he said to her one morning,—"Come, Elsie, take your castanets, and let us ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Kit entered the arcade and sat down in a quiet spot to look about. The moon was nearly full and flooded half the patio with silver light; the rest was in shadow and rows of colored lamps twinkled in the gloom. A band played behind the pillars, the rattle of castanets breaking in on the tinkle of the guitars when the beat was sharply marked. The music was seductive, unlike any Kit had heard in England, and he thought it tinged by the melancholy the Moors had brought, long since, ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... the teasel tops, Pink-thorned, advance with bristling spike on spike Against the furious sunlight. Field and copse Are sick with summer: now, with breathless stops, The locusts cymbal; now grasshoppers beat Their castanets: and rolled in dust, a team,— Like some mean life wrapped in its sorry dream,— An empty wagon ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... correct,' observed Blathers, nodding his head in a confirmatory way, and playing carelessly with the handcuffs, as if they were a pair of castanets. 'Who is the boy? What account does he give of himself? Where did he come from? He didn't drop out of the clouds, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... hands in front of him, and made the knuckles of every finger crack like castanets. In another second he was gone again. But we knew we were now forgiven all our ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... to give an Indian dance in costume, and the Dutch dance is in clogs, and oh, you can't imagine how funny and clumpy it sounds, but it is real pretty with the aprons and the caps, but the Spanish is beautiful with castanets. You must all come. Is ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... 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 ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... decide which should have the kingdom. Then the youngest took from his pocket the nut the Cat had given to him, and there was seen a little dog so tiny that it could go through a ring without touching it; he was also able to dance, and play the castanets, while his ears touched the ground. The King was embarassed, for it was impossible to find a flaw ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... place between Mr and Mrs Root, and the consequence was, that I was bustled up into the bedroom, and my second-best clothes, which I then had on, were changed for the best, and, with a supererogatory dab with a wet towel over my face, I was brought down, and, my little heart playing like a pair of castanets against my ribs, I was delivered into the tender ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... utensils shone, in a line on shelves 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, of the grand darkness of the valleys, of ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... been words enow between 'em to have expressed provocation, they had gone together by the ears like a pair of castanets. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... 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, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... silently away from before our path. Once we went by a drove of Texan cattle, who stared wildly at the intruders; as we passed they charged down by us, the ground rumbling beneath their tread, while their long horns knocked against each other with a sound like the clattering of a multitude of castanets. We could see clearly enough to keep our general course over the trackless plain, steering by the stars where the prairie was perfectly level and without landmarks; and our ride was timed well, for as we galloped down into the valley of the Little Missouri the sky above the line of the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... pleased me beyond idea. Music was never more rapturous than that which accompanies this dance. It quite enchanted me, and I longed to have sprung upon the stage. The cadence is so strongly marked by the castanets, that it is almost impossible to be out of time; and the rapidity of steps and varied movements scarcely allows a moment to think of being tired. I should imagine the eternal dance, with which certain tribes of American ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Daggett." Mr. Boltwood was uninterestedly fumbling in his money pocket. Behind Milt Daggett, Claire shook her head wildly, rattling her hands as though she were playing castanets. Mr. Boltwood shrugged. He did not understand. His relations with young men in cheap raincoats were entirely monetary. They did something for you, and you paid them—preferably not too much—and they ceased to be. Whereas Milt Daggett ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... mules. The next day, in the midst of continuing torrential tropical downpours, we climbed out of the hot valley to the cold heights of Pampaconas. We were soaked with perspiration and drenched with rain. Snow had been falling above the village; our teeth chattered like castanets. Professor Foote immediately commandeered Mrs. Guzman's fire and filled our tea kettle. It may be doubted whether a more wretched, cold, wet, and bedraggled party ever arrived at Guzman's hut; certainly nothing ever tasted better than ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... and high-hat cymbals paraded by in carts, banged and stroked and tinkled enthusiastically by crew after crew of maddened tympanists. And then came the others, on foot: tambourines and wood blocks and parade cymbals and castanets. At the tail of this portion of the Procession came a single old man wearing spectacles and riding in a small cart drawn by a donkey. He had white hair and he was playing on a series of water-glasses filled to various levels. His ear was cocked toward the glasses with painstaking care. He was ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... voice proceeded to give an excellent imitation of a police whistle, and concluded with that of the clicking of castanets. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... my horse and made after them, guided by the yelping and baying. In less than a quarter of a mile they were on his haunches, and he wheeled and stood under a bush, charging at them when they came near him, and once catching one, inflicting an ugly cut. All the while his teeth kept going like castanets, with a rapid champing sound. I ran up close and killed him by a shot through the backbone where it joined the neck. His ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... deep in the snow that lay upon the stoop. I caught but a dim glimpse of her form, for the night was cloudy; but I could hear her teeth rattling like castanets, and, as the sharp wind blew her clothes close to her form, I could discern from the sharpness of the outlines that she was very scantily supplied ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... even more than that, for the poor fellow's teeth chattered, and on the cross-bar of his hunting-knife, planted upright in the bank, as we repeat, his rifle-barrel rattled like a pair of castanets. Do not ask too much of a man! There are times when one is not in the mood; and, moreover, where would be the merit if heroes were ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... filled with idols, was covered with gilding and silk, and drawn by noble bulls, festooned and garlanded. A procession was formed in front; and it opened into an avenue, up and down which gaily dressed dancing-boys paced or danced, shaking castanets, the attendant worshippers singing in discordant voices, beating tom-toms, cymbals, etc. Images (of Boodh apparently) abounded on the car, in front of which a child was placed. The throng of natives was very great and perfectly orderly, indeed, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... woven from the wool of the mountain goat, is thrown over the shoulder; curiously carved rattles are held in their hands, whistles imitating owls, wild geese, loons, eagles and other animals, are blown, drums are beaten; castanets—small hoops upon which numerous puffin beaks are suspended—shaken, birds' down is scattered until it fills the air and covers the performers, who, with a swinging, slouchy movement, dance for an hour at a time, rattling, whistling, singing and grunting. ...
— Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands - for the government of British Columbia • Newton H. Chittenden
... Envy. On his head a wreath concealed his increasing baldness; along his left arm the sceptre lay; behind him a boy admonished him noisily to remember he was man, while to the rear for miles and miles there rang the laugh of trumpets, the click of castanets, the shouts of dancers, the roar of the multitude, the tramp of legions, and the cry, caught ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... 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 ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... 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; ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... pedestrians, who had no time to squander upon a visit to the neveras, or ice-houses. The effect of this animated picture was farther heightened by the cries of the venders, the harmony of some neighboring barber's guitar, the continual jingling of the mules' bells, and the clicking of castanets. ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... (of 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 ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... used in their dances the nails of wild pigs, which they attached to their feet in order to produce a noise something like castanets. That ornament ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... edging of sidewalk, are the dim little shops, curtained by yellow canvas, intensely and delightfully local, and wholly unknowing of outside demand or competition. One of these places does indeed cater to visitors with a humble supply of photographs and of clicking sets of varnished wooden castanets paired by colored worsteds; but the others of the store-keepers and the inhabitants in the streets are clearly unhardened to foreigners, and regard us solely with a deep and artless curiosity,—tempered, I hope, by admiration. As the town has been, so ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... if his teeth were castanets, the babu trod gingerly down damp stone steps whose center had been worn into ruts by countless feet. The German came last, and ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... lunch-table as favors and 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 ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... than once. Another very graceful dance, the name of which I have forgotten, consists of four couples posturing to waltz time, changing from one partner to another as the dance progresses, and finally waltzing off with the original one, the motion of clinking castanets at different parts of the dance suggesting for ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... 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 all was thickly curtained ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... solemnity. The slaves danced in a circle around a leader of the dance in the centre. At first, it is a simple walking round, face to back, the legs raised, and a little swinging, and the steps keeping time to the iron castanets fastened on the hands of each. Meanwhile, they sing, and the chorus comes at intervals between the noise of castanets, or finger-clappers. They now turn round and face their leader, some prostrating ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... minutes of concentrated agony had in truth made me ill. My wet clothes clinging round my body began to chill me now, and as I crept into the house and upstairs to my room, my teeth were chattering like castanets. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the scum of a great city was shaved, curled and painted free; and there were public houses, where vagabond slaves and sexless priests drank the mulled wine of Crete, supped on the flesh of beasts slaughtered in the arena, or watched the Syrian women twist to the click of castanets." The account of the arena under Nero should not be missed, but it is too long to quote here. The book, which we give three stars, is dedicated to Edwin Albert Schroeder. Fortunately, of all Saltus's works, it ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... is now crammed with men, singing at the top of their voices, in one of their quaint, monotonous, endless, negro-Methodist chants, with obscure syllables recurring constantly, and slight variations interwoven, all accompanied with a regular drumming of the feet and clapping of the hands, like castanets. Then the excitement spreads: inside and outside the inclosure men begin to quiver and dance, others join, a circle forms, winding monotonously round some one in the centre; some "heel and toe" tumultuously, others ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... granary. All the village inhabitants had shared in this pleasant task, and now, following an ancient custom, they had erected a trophy composed of a few last sheaves of corn, round which the young girls and men began to dance gaily, to the sound of guitars and castanets. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... 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 man ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... and indignant organ was lost in the hubbub that mingled with the wild music of the guitars, to which was now added the tinkle of bells and the vehement click of a round dozen of castanets, marking the bull-fighting rhythm of a new air called ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... 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
... tresses, braided thro', Sparkled that flower of 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 ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... glou! the crystal trumpets slowly repeat their notes, the powerful sonority of which has a labored and smothered sound, as though they came from under water; they mingle with the jingling of rattles and the noise of castanets. We also have the impression of being carried away in the irresistible swing of this incomprehensible gayety, composed in proportions we can scarcely measure, of elements mystic, puerile and even ghastly. A sort of religious terror is ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... sword and half unsheath'd to strike. "Oh born to wander with your flocks," he cried, "And bask and dream along the mountain-side; To urge your mules, tinkling from hill to hill; Or at the vintage-feast to drink your fill, And strike your castanets, with gipsy-maid Dancing Fandangos in the chesnut shade— Come on," he cried, and threw his glove in scorn, "Not this your wonted pledge, the brimming horn. Valiant in peace! Adventurous at home! Oh, had ye vow'd with pilgrim-staff to roam; Or with banditti ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... I could hear his teeth clicking like castanets. Having had a tertian fever more than once in the Turkish campaigning, I had a fellow-feeling for the poor lad, knowing well how the thought of a plunge into cold water would make ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... odors, with the emanations of the crowd, the cloy of myrrh. Through the exits whiffs of garlic filtered from the kitchens below, and with them, from the exterior arcades, came the beat of timbrels, the click of castanets. Overhead was a sky of troubled ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... (who was a shipwright) sang one of his national songs to an accompaniment of thumb-snapping (to imitate castanets), at which he was very expert. He had a fine baritone voice, and his song was full of fire, being a famous bull-fighting ditty, in which El Toro came in ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... going like a pair of castanets," said Smith, laying his hand on the breast of the unconscious man. "He seems to me to be frightened all to pieces. Chuck the water over him! What a face he has ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 offer, to secure as much ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... the festival of the Holy Sacrament, the choir-children turn in a sort of slow waltz as they sing hymns before the high altar of the cathedral. In other towns, on the festivals of the Virgin, a saraband is slowly danced round Her statue, with striking of sticks, and the rattle of castanets; and to close the ceremony by way of Amen the people ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... goat, almost jumping out of the traces; and then, away it tore along the road towards the village at the rate of twenty miles an hour, the gig bounding from rut to rut as if it were a kangaroo, and shaking Teddy's bones together like castanets. ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... like a Spanish dancing girl, in short kilts, red sash, and jaunty little cap placed sidewise on her head. She wore a wig of black hair, and her face was stained to a dusky, gipsy hue. Over her thumb hung castanets and in her hand was a tambourine. Roguishly she began to sway into a slow, rhythmic dance, beating time with her instruments as she moved. Gradually the speed quickened to a faster time. She swung gracefully to and fro with all ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... from the circle, puffing violently, and mopping the moisture from his forehead with a snowy pocket-handkerchief. Meanwhile, the young man, who had regained his composure, brought from the inn some castanets, and before I was aware all were dancing merrily beneath the trees. The sun had set, but the crimson sky in the west cast bright reflections among the shadows, and upon the old walls and the half-buried columns covered with ivy in the depths of the garden, while below ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... in a minute," he said. "I just noticed discorea villosa has the finest rattle boxes formed. I've been waiting to show you. And the hop tree has its castanets all green and gold. In a few more weeks it will begin to play for you. ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... farmers hatched poultry by artificial beat. They were the first musicians; they possessed guitars, single and double pipes, cymbals, drums, lyres, harps, flutes, the sambric, ashur, etc.; they had even castanets, such as are now used in Spain. In medicine and surgery they had reached such a degree of perfection that several hundred years B.C. the operation for the removal of cataract from the eye was performed among them; one of the most delicate and difficult feats of surgery, only attempted by us in ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... over all the American jazz music boomed and whanged its syncopation. On the music racks of violinists who had meant to be Elmans or Kreislers were sheets entitled Jazz Baby Fox Trot. Drums, horns, cymbals, castanets, sandpaper. So the mannequins and marionettes of Europe tried ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... into the kitchen. The table was covered with tin plates. Beneath it, wedged knelt Tommy with a pistol firm in his hand; but the plates were rattling up and down like castanets. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... young heart under the weight of years. Clara and Magdalena were particularly struck by the native grace displayed by the youths and maidens in the bolero, a dance originally introduced by the Moors: with castanets in their hands, accompanying their steps with unpremeditated music, they would alternately advance and retreat, fly and pursue, until, exhausted by the exercise, they would rest upon the rustic bench or the green bank, and while away the hours with song and guitar. What noble-looking ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... at every bound; for the thermometer was twenty below zero, and the air snapping. A cloud of snow whirled out and up behind them; through it the antlers waved like bare oak boughs in the wind; the sound of their hoofs was like the clicking of mighty castanets—"Oh for a sledge and bells!" I thought; for Santa Claus never had such ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... including the Lancers, and two or three native dances called La Polomila, the Dondon Karape and La Santa Fe, which are accompanied with graceful poses, while the women, as they dance, snap their fingers in imitation of castanets. While the dance is in progress the good and hospitable Vicente remains outside to fire off his gun at intervals with the view of frightening away the jaguars, one of these animals having been killed only eight days before in the very room wherein the revelers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... tails, 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 guitar, a kind of high-pitched violin, and from three to four pairs of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... clung to the beautiful thought that Miss Dorothy would be sick, that she had missed her train—but no! There she was, with her shiny high-heeled slippers, her pink skirt that puffed out like a fan, and her silver whistle on a chain. The little clicking castanets that rang out so sharply were in her ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... beyond a spacious landing, where two proud-like darkies tended a crystalline punch bowl, four wide archways in a rose-vine lattice framed gliding silhouettes of waltzers, already smoothly at it to the castanets of "La Paloma." Old John Minafer, evidently surfeited, was in the act of leaving these delights. "D'want 'ny more o' that!" he barked. "Just slidin' around! Call that dancin'? Rather see a jig any day in the world! They ain't very modest, some of 'em. ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... was taken to such a school myself, and Good Heavens! What did I see there! More than fifty boys and girls, one of them, I am ashamed to say, the son of a candidate for office, a boy wearing the golden boss, a lad not less than twelve years of age. He was jingling a pair of castanets and dancing a step which an immodest slave could not dance with decency." [57] Such might have been the reflections of a puritan had he entered a modern dancing-academy. We may be permitted to question the immorality ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... 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 ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... 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 ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... the warmth of the direct sun we were thrown suddenly from summer to winter, and our saturated clothing, uncomfortably cool in sunlight, became icy with the evaporation and the cold shadow-air. We turned blue, and no matter how firmly I tried to shut my teeth they rattled like a pair of castanets. Though it was only half-past three, the Major decided to camp as soon as he saw this effect, much as we had need to push on. We landed on the right, and were soon revived by dry clothes and a ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... perversion of life, and has the quality of an enormous "note" or memorandum, 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 ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... kicking and humming like a crazy top, and he was very queer all the rest of that day; so I kept the bottle corked after that. But his favorite nook was among the ferns in the vase which a Parian dancing-girl carried. She stood just over the stove on one little toe, rattling some castanets, which made no sound, and never getting a step farther for all her prancing. This was a warm and pretty retreat for Buzz, and there he spent much of his time, swinging on the ferns, sleeping snugly in the vase, or warming ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... saw the Spanish flag floating over the roof of the alcalde's office, while the hollow beating of a drum, the bucolic quavering of a flute, and the snapping of castanets, reached ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... spaces, the glowing, shimmering radiance, the 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 this strange ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... his presence by sounds which are audible in the inmost darkness of the chals. He is the beetle of the pedlar tribe. He does not sing, he does not cry—he stridulates. Carrying in his hand a large number of small coffee-cups, fitted one within another, he strikes them together like a string of castanets, while in the left hand he bears a portable stove-like article on which rests his tin ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... shared by 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 ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... sombrero, and, secure in his knowledge of Spanish and Mexican, he now advanced boldly through the more populous and better lighted parts of the city. He even lingered a little while in front of a cafe, where men were playing guitar and mandolin, and girls were dancing with castanets. The sight of light and life pleased the boy who had been so long in prison. These people were diverting themselves and they smiled and laughed. They seemed to have kindly feelings for everybody, but he remembered that cruel Spanish strain, ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... imitate these sounds. For all instruments—the bass drum, flute, clarinet, trombone, trumpet, violin, and even pipe organ—an animal may be mentioned that owns the fundamental tones in its voice, and which man has imitated. Castanets, for example, were imitations of the rattlesnakes; the first musical instruments of any savage tribe of men are made so as to represent the voices of the chief animals of that ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... if he couldn't help looking strangely at the Major, who couldn't help looking strangely at Mr Dombey, who couldn't help looking strangely at Cleopatra, who couldn't help nodding her bonnet over one eye, and rattling her knife and fork upon her plate in using them, as if she were playing castanets. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... countenance became the colour of tallow—his teeth chattered, and he gave visible signs of the utmost consternation. "Take heart of grace, man," said Campbell, "and dinna sit clattering your jaws there like a pair of castanets! I think there can be nae difficulty in your telling Mr. Justice, that ye have seen me of yore, and ken me to be a cavalier of fortune, and a man of honour. Ye ken fu' weel ye will be some time resident in my vicinity, when I may have the power, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... went off, he was surprised at a singular noise which it made in running, not unlike the rattling of two pieces of loose bone knocked sharply together; in fact, a pair of castanets. This he could hear after it had got fifty yards from him, and, perhaps, farther; but there the creature suddenly stopped, turned its head round, and stood barking ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... the air several times with both hands. The motion greatly resembles those of danseuses playing the castanets. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... was attacked, and Princess Clia as well. The half-dozen slender legs darted in every direction like sword thrusts to reach their victims, and the cruel claws snapped so rapidly that the sound was like the rattling of castanets. But the four prisoners regarded their enemy with smiling composure, and no yell greeted the ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... beautiful? What is holy and what is profane? It either refuses to admit the existence of these questions or else asserts that, as insoluble, they are also negligible problems. To all such stupid moralizing it prefers the click of the castanets! The law, then, of this naturalism always and everywhere is the law of rebellion, of ruthless self-assertion, of whim and impulse, ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... perhaps he had yet to bring on the dessert. Whether or not, he rose immediately afterwards into the air, with the same clangorous clapping of his wings; but this time the noise was accompanied by the clattering of his horny mandibles, like a pair of castanets, causing a sound not only singular, but, if heard by strangers, calculated to beget within them ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... dance proceeded, the sound of the castanets grew wilder and wilder, and the high heels beat double raps on the floor. Then, suddenly, with one sharp "click-ck" the dance ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... condition is not unnoticed. It is heard, if not clearly seen. Two or three, standing close to him, can hear his teeth clacking like castanets! ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... amusement when we gave two dances; one with castanets and tambourines and much swirling and swooping; another with Spanish shawls draped on us. This latter one was more or less of a failure, for we couldn't seem to get into step when we did it a second time. The audience, however, applauded, regardless of the fact, and didn't see that the ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... a dancing school I saw—I did upon my honour—more than fifty boys and girls in the school; and among them one boy, quite a child, about twelve years of age, the son of a man who was at that time a candidate for office. And what I saw made me pity the Commonwealth. I saw the child dancing to the castanets, and it was a dance which one of our wretched, shameless slaves would not have danced.' On another occasion he showed a power of quick retort. As censor he had degraded a man named Asellus, whom Mummius afterwards restored to the equites. Asellus impeached Scipio, and taunted him with the unluckiness ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... soft Italian melodies; yonder, Spanish songs are sung, accompanied by the rattle of the castanets; but strongest of all, and predominating over the rest, the street-organ tunes of the moment, the exciting "Can-Can" music, which Orpheus never knew, and which was never heard by the "Belle Helene." Even the barrow was tempted to hop upon one ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of the first three, which are round dances, the dances are danced by two persons; the steps are very fancy, and for some castanets are used. It was customary after each change of step for the gentleman to recite a pretty little stanza complimentary to the lady, who in turn responded her refined appreciation also in verse, sometimes ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... guests, had been holding this motley audience for two hours with selections from the gramophone, with illustrated Scripture lessons and pictures from the Life of Christ, and by calling on her "band" for "music" with a big drum, castanets, cymbals, and various other instruments of Indian manipulation. Salvation Army methods have great influence over a childlike people, and Mrs. Baker would make, in case of necessity, a first-class ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... Their two shells did roister, Like castanets flitting; While limpets moved clearly, And rocks very nearly ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
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