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Castanets   Listen
noun
Castanets  n. pl.  Two small, concave shells of ivory or hard wood, shaped like spoons, fastened to the thumb, and beaten together with the middle finger; used by the Spaniards and Moors as an accompaniment to their dance and guitars. Note: The singular, castanet, is used of one of the pair, or, sometimes, of the pair forming the instrument. "The dancer, holding a castanet in each hand, rattles them to the motion of his feet."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Castanets" Quotes from Famous Books



... on increasing from hour to hour. By noon the wind began to rise; before night it was blowing a furious gale. Furious blasts clutched at the windows, and rattled them like castanets. The wind howled and shrieked and moaned, till it seemed as if the air were filled with angry demons fighting to ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... of Anguish, and rosaries, and blessed palms. The kitchen 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 the mountains ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti

... 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, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... 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

... 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 big fire of driftwood. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... one of his earliest proclamations to the people, and is particularly remarkable for nothing else, unless it be its waxen and bejewelled 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 ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... 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, ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... 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 eyes of a leopardess. She drew her body up to her full height ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... 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 merely witty or comical rhymes ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field

... his disposition. Even Gibault felt a little uneasy, and began to think himself a fool for having ventured on such an expedition alone. His state of mind was not improved by the sound of the artist's teeth chattering in his head like castanets. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... Tree. "This one is 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 thought but little of Weights, though ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... stiff hair and beard, a wrinkled forehead, a broad flat nose which makes a marked angle with the forehead, pointed ears (modern, but guaranteed by another copy of the head), and a short tail sprouting from the small of the back The arms, which were missing, have been incorrectly restored with castanets. The right should be held up, the left down, in a gesture of astonishment. In this work we see again Myron's skill in suggesting movement. We get a lively impression of an advance suddenly checked and changed ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... to which it has happened, Excellency," he said. "The padre say it is not the fault of any one, for the bush is high there, and who could see through them? But it is the snake—the one you say has the castanets in the tail, and it has put the poison in the foot ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan

... we went ashore in the same 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 shipshape—were much admired, and we were invited, from every quarter, to give them an American sailor's dance; but after the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... was made at 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 1926 Tatler • Various

... country—that is, low and 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

... for 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... coo in an amorous and mournful manner, and are emblems of despairing lovers; the wood-pecker sets up a sort of loud and hearty laugh; the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, from the dusk till day-break, serenades his mate with the clattering of castanets. All the tuneful passeres express their complacency by sweet modulations, and a variety of melody. The swallow, as has been observed in a former letter, by a shrill alarm bespeaks the attention of the other hirundines, and bids them be aware that the hawk is at hand. Aquatic and gregarious ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... visited the town—at the secret bidding of her Highness—but he was so unceremoniously hustled over the frontier that his teeth must have rattled like a dancer's castanets. It was a great country for expeditiousness, as you will find, if you do me the honor to follow ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... 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 enclosure 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 merely tremble and stagger on, others stoop and rise, others ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... 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 ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... 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

... 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

... joining the merry band of his descendants in innocent sport and festivity, keeping a 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 ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... 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

... when she took part in a dance performed by eight gitanas, with 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 by common consent the jewel offered as the prize of the best dancer ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... powerful 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 Espada's Return ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... be trusted to itself in its most insignificant member. See it well out—with the voice—and the part of the audience is made surprisingly easier. In that excellent description of the Spanish mendicant and his guitar, as well as the very happy touches about the dance and the castanets, the people were really desirous to express very hearty appreciation; but by giving them rather too much to do in watching and listening for latter words, you stopped them. I take the liberty of making the remark, as one who has fought with ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... perspiration stood in beads on the back of Vandover's hands, running down in tiny rivulets between his fingers, his teeth were shut close together and he was breathing short through his nose, a fine trembling had seized upon his hands so that the chips in his palm rattled like castanets. In the stale and murky atmosphere of the overheated room in the midst of the vast silence of the sleeping city they played ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... 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 tips of the slender fingers. Some passion seemed to exhaust ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... as 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

... chiropody, chiropodist, chirognomy, chirographer, chirographist, chirogymnast, chirologist, cheirosophy, manicure, chiromancer, manual, chirography, ambidextral, ambidextrous, ambidexterity, ambidexter, achirous, chiragra, fist, manacle, castanets, mount, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... 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 and peered ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... 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 ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... 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

... 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 of ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... style, tone, and allusions were thoroughly Spanish; and, through the French dress, the Castilian idiom seemed here and there to peep forth, confirming the notion of a translation. Clara was an Andalusian, half gipsy, half Moor, skilled in guitars and castanets, saynetes and boleros. L'Estrange makes her narrate her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... 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 ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... 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 ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... singing voice, and was totally ignorant of music; but Joe kindly informed me that any fool could play the bones, and made two pairs of castanets for me out of beef bones supplied by the soldiers (we had no joints ourselves, but only a bullock's cheek now and then) so that I too was able to bear my part in the concerts which now became ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... fields brings me to the village just in time to be greeted by the shouts and hand-clapping of a wedding procession that is returning from conducting the bride to the bath. Men and boys are beating rude, home-made tambourines, and women are dancing along before the bride, clicking castanets, while a crowd of at least two hundred villagers, arrayed in whatever finery they can muster for the occasion, are following behind, clapping their hands in measured chorus. This hand-clapping is, I believe, pretty generally practiced ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... waves and the winds, with terror, with uproar, mingle boat-women crowned with roses. He who has seen the Basque country wishes to see it again. It is the blessed land. Two harvests a year; villages resonant and gay; a stately poverty; all Sunday the sound of guitars, dancing, castanets, love-making; houses clean and bright; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... if, his scared 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

... of bright brazen wind- instruments, horribly twisted, worth, as I should conceive, some thousands of pounds, and which it is utterly impossible that anybody in any season can ever play or want to play. It had five triangles in the window, six pairs of castanets, and three harps; likewise every polka with a coloured frontispiece that ever was published; from the original one where a smooth male and female Pole of high rank are coming at the observer with their arms a- ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... dance, specially in favour among the Andalusians; is in 3/4 time, and is danced to the accompaniment of guitars and castanets. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... teeth with gold; their 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, ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... blessed the memory of that famous ruler wielded by the hand of Nicholas I. Here and there, at some slight rise in the ground, the engine literally did leave the rails and skim through the air for a few yards, alighting with a jar that brought my teeth together like castanets, and rushing forward again. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... was announced. When the Little Colonel came on the stage leading the 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 ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston

... science in their peculiar localities of town. In the Inns of Court and Chancery Lane professional etiquette forbids barristers and solicitors to play upon organs, harmoniums, pianos, violins, or other stringed instruments, drums, trumpets, cymbals, shawms, bassoons, triangles, castanets or any other bony devices for the production of noise, flageolets, hautboys, or any other sort of boys—between the hours of 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. And this rule of etiquette is supported by various special conditions introduced into the leases by which the ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... the Valencian banners adorned with enormous bats and large L's beside the coat of arms; then, to the sound of the flageolet, the retinue of brave Indians, shepherds from Belen, Catalans and Mallorcans; following these passed the dwarfs with their monstrously huge heads, clicking the castanets to the rhythm of a Moorish march; behind these came the giants of the Corpus and at the end, the banners of the guilds; an endless row of red standards, faded with the years, and so tall that their tops reached higher than the ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... silently ran under them and uttered a terrific yell. One of the Chinamen was so frightened that he let go all holds and dropped into the water, while his companion remained in the tree, his teeth chattering like castanets. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... 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 ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... phase of bookselling," said the young man. "How is it, though, that libraries are shrines of such austere calm? If books are as provocative as you suggest, one would expect every librarian to utter the shrill screams of a hierophant, to clash ecstatic castanets in ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... that followed 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 ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... until now been derived from life in a rough mining camp. Before her half-closed eyes still shimmered a vista of strange, exotic scenes and people, the thronging crowds of carnivals and fetes; the Mexican girls swaying through the movements of the fandango to the music of guitars and castanets; the great rodeo with its hundreds of vaqueros, which was held at one of the ranchos just outside the town; and, lastly, and most vividly of all, the never-to-be-forgotten ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... Indians fell sullenly to the task of gathering dead branches and underwood. They were weak and paused often, catching themselves, in the act of stooping, with giddy motions, or staggering to the center of operations with their knees shaking like castanets. ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... 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

... sounds of animals—and each musical instrument was originally devised to 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 ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... 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 ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... and the young 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 her liaison with the Emperor; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... of castanets and cymbals, and, in the midst of a rustic crowd, men clad in white tunics, with red bands, lead out an ass, richly harnessed, his tail adorned with ribands and his hoofs painted. A box, covered with a saddle-cloth of yellow linen, sways to and ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... Serpents, Crwths, Pentachords, Rebabs, Pantalons, Conches, Flageolets made of Pelicon bones, Tam-Tams, Carillons, Xylophones, Crescents of beating bells, Mandoras, Whistling Vases of Clay, Zampognas, Zithers, Bugles, Octochords, Naccaras or Turkish castanets and Quinternas. He heard blare the two hundred thousand curved trumpets which Solomon had made for his temple, and the forty thousand which accompanied the Psalms of David. Jubal played his Magrepha; Pythagoras came with his Monochord; Plato listened to the music of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... 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

... 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

... roughly lined with tin, in which naked imps of boys perilously paddled. Out from the boats rushed music in clouds like incense; wild, African music of chanting voices, beating tom-toms, or clapping hands that clacked together like castanets. Very old men and very young youths thumped furiously on earthen drums shaped like the jars of Elephantine, once so famous that they travelled the length of Egypt filled with wine. The breeze that fanned to us from beyond the palms and lebbeks, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... gyrations—wiggle, squirm, shake. And 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 to ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... 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 black, harp-like shadows of the loom. While the uncle stopped treadling and ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell

... board-walk, with heels clicking like castanets, conscious that the world was hushed ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... 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, beating tambourines, and dancing. ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... 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 ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... guitar I'll play the strain to thee, And while I watch yon laughing star, The words will come to me. And mark thee, when my heart is sad, And full of sweet regrets, Or when it throbs to laughter glad, Like feet to castanets. O, Fountain, thou must sing the song My Juan sang to me; Yet stay—the only words I know Are ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... pawing palfreys wait, And the page—Dan Cupid—frets, Holding at the garden gate Reins that chime like castanets, Bits a-foam with fairy flakes Flung from seas whence Venus rose: Come, for Father Time awakes And ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... castanets, and my Cid! my Cid! and the Alhambra, the Sierra Nevada, and ay di me, Alhama; and Boabdil el Chico and el Zagal and Fray Antonio Agapida!" She flung out the rattle, yawning, with her arms up and her head back, in the posture of a woman wounded. One of her aunt's chance ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the 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 ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... person, well worth omitting. "And such a jolly girl! brightens 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, you ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... close, full of that indefinable fragrance of fresh earth and growing things, and before it was time to start he cheered himself by a little music. He went into the dreary, unused parlor, and pulling up the green Venetian blinds, which rattled like castanets, he pushed back the ivy-fastened shutters, and sat down by the open window; then, with his chin resting upon his fiddle, and one foot in its drab gaiter swinging across his knee, he played mournfully and shrilly in the twilight, until it ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland

... been so lively on our setting forth, flagged, and at length subsided into an occasional remark on the obstacles which impeded our progress. Nothing renders a man more reserved than his approach to an anticipated danger. I looked askance at Adolphe, and saw that his teeth rattled like castanets; and when the foremost keepers, in doubt as to the track, blew a plaintive note, which, ere it died away, was answered by another in the distance, showing that we were in the right one, Adolphe's breathing ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... 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, but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various

... Greece, Mary—we will see all the world's masterpieces together," he jubilated. "You shall be my wander-bride." And he sang her little snatches of gay song, in French and Italian, thrumming an imaginary guitar or making castanets of ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... much fever here come," remarked Cupid, while his teeth clattered together like castanets. "Sar, you lib for carry dem quinine powder dat dem ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... overlooking the spot, and there sat, with his neck stretched out, his eyes starting from his head, and his lips drawn back, till his teeth, displayed from ear to ear, rapped against one another like a pair of castanets in a bolero, under the influence of the most ecstatic alarm, curiously mixed up with the joy of complete success. The poor wounded Gulpin, in the mean time, rubbed his ankles as he fired off a volley of imprecations, the only effect of which was to increase the number of his audience, grinning and ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... creaked along, their red curtains flapping like banners of pure joy; or crowds of people pressed their way, with the murmur of many, many voices. It was the humming of a bee-hive, varied with the calling of vendors, the thrumming of guitars, the nasal screaming of accordions, the clack-clack of castanets, the wailing of hand organs, all the kinds of noise that men with smoothed hair and soft white shirts can dance to, after internal baths with anything but water and preparatory to the return to town for a slashing ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... steam burst from their nostrils 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 ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... many roofs of the place was like the trampling of an army of horsemen, and every spout was gurgling musically with full throat. The one court was filled with a clashing upon its pavement, and the other with a soft singing upon its grass, with which mingled a sound as of little castanets from the broad leaves of the water-lilies in the moat. Ever and anon came the lightning, and the great bass of the thunder to ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... served in the same way, Pieced out for different marts in the Levant; Except some certain portions of the prey, Light classic articles of female want, French stuffs, lace, tweezers, toothpicks, teapot, tray, Guitars and castanets from Alicant, All which selected from the spoil he gathers, Robb'd for his daughter by the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... river-bed path suddenly we started a troop of tall giraffes, who galloped, or rather sailed off, in their strange gait, their tails screwed up over their backs, and their hoofs rattling like castanets. They were about three hundred yards from us, and therefore practically out of shot, but Good, who was walking ahead, and who had an express loaded with solid ball in his hand, could not resist temptation. Lifting his gun, he let drive at the last, a young cow. By some extraordinary chance the ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... coming to our house on Saturday evening, and I must get up a Spanish song that Madame Strahlberg has taught me, to charm his ears and those of other people. Oh! I can do it very well. Won't you come and hear me play the castanets, if Monsieur Enguerrand can spare you? There is a young Polish pianist who is to play our accompaniment. Ah, there is nothing like a Polish pianist to play Chopin! He is charming, poor young man! ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)

... and repassed these, others in brave attire; with castanets of pearl shells, making gay music; and ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... sound in the air, not even a footstep. There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter answer of a further dog. Presently up the street I heard a bony clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party. In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of its person, swung by me with a stately stride and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... afraid? I expected to hear your teeth chattering together like castanets. I expected to feel your body shaking, as if ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... a charmed ear. The minute's hush; the low twitter—answered softly from bush and tree; the soft chiming in of other notes; the swelling, quickening, increasing song—till every sparrow and kildeer in all Pattaquasset drew his bow and clattered his castanets with the speed and the eagerness of twenty fiddlers. Only in this orchestra the heads turned gracefully on swelling throats, and for the angular play of elbows there was the lifting flutter of joyous wings; ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... night [458], three men of consular rank, who feared the words from the message, he placed them on the proscenium of the stage, and then suddenly came bursting out, with a loud noise of flutes and castanets [459], dressed in a mantle and tunic reaching down to his heels. Having danced out a song, he retired. Yet he who had acquired such dexterity in other exercises, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... being 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 was short, and the art of the ballerina is not to be ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... of the Berecyntus or 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. Catullus has left us a dramatic ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... 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 or ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... hope, he had 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 ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... 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 into darkness by ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... 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 ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... door is half opened, Louise is at the piano, singing, in a fresh voice, some lines where "Castilla" rhymes with "mantilla," and "Andalousie" with "jealousy," while her agile fingers played on the old instrument an accompaniment supposed to imitate bells and castanets. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... pleasures was to watch in the evenings the Spaniards, shedding their usual lethargy, dance the fandango and the bolero with a perfection of grace and agility, even in the villages. The colonel offered them the use of his band, but they, quite rightly, preferred the guitar, the castanets, and a woman's voice; an accompaniment which gave the dance its national characteristics. These improvised dances, in the open air, engaged in by the working class in the towns as well as in the country, gave us so ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot

... door enclosed her like a picture-frame. The bobbins disentangled themselves under her fingers with a sound like the clicking of castanets. Her profile ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... time 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 ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... of goodness, is the heart of the philanthropist to be gladdened with the desire of peace fulfilled over the earth? When are paltry family intrigues to cease, causing the blood of innocent thousands to be shed? When will the aristocracy of genius in France give over jingling, like castanets, their trashy rhymes "gloire" and "victoire," and apply themselves to objects worthy of creatures endowed with the faculty of reason? Or, if they must have fighting, if it is their nature, if the prime instinct with them is the thirst of human blood, how cowardly, how paltry, is it to hound ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... new style, nor the French style, nor the English style: though it may have been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style, which is a free and joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful air of off-hand inspiration, from the chirping little castanets. As they danced among the orchard trees, and down the groves of stems and back again, and twirled each other lightly round and round, the influence of their airy motion seemed to spread and spread, in the sun-lighted scene, like an expanding circle in the water. Their streaming hair and fluttering ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens

... the sword and had scaled the heaven that it might storm the city from above. The lanes became little runnels of darkness and night slowly silted up the broader streets. The incessant orgy of sound that by day had been but the tuneless rattling of healthy throats and the chatter of castanets became charged with tragedy by its passage through the grave twilight. The people pressed about him like vivacious ghosts, differentiating themselves from the dusk by wearing white flowers in their hair or cherishing the glow-worm tip of ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... one who has witnessed it, the olapa alone took part. The dancers held in each hand a couple of pebbles, ili-ili—hence the name of the dance—which they managed to clash against each other, after the fashion of castanets, thus producing a rude music of much the same quality as that elicited from the "bones" in our minstrel performances. According to another witness, the drum also was sometimes used in connection with the pebbles as an accompaniment to ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... of her tastes already known to the reader, that he said to her one morning,—"Come, Elsie, take your castanets, and let ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... shields of sultry brass; 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 rattles through ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... like castanets; his eyes fairly bulged from their sockets; the breath came in hot gasps from his white lips; his brain reeled, as he took in, in that rapid glance of horror, ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... 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 ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... top of Mt. Quirinal."[45] "The Neapolitans work till evening: then take their lute or guitar and walk about the city, or upon the sea shore with it, to enjoy the fresco. One sees their little brown children jumping about stark naked and the bigger ones dancing with castanets, while others play on the cymbal to them."[46] "Kennst dud as Land," then ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... smoky lamps, with her little bodice of velvet, her gauze skirt spangled with gold, her flesh-coloured tights, she was really charming. At that moment she was dancing, with wonderful lightness and grace, some lascivious fandango, while she accompanied herself with the castanets. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... witness to the Justice that I am a man of fortune and honour. You will be some time resident in my vicinity, and you know it will be in my power to do as much for you. Speak out, man, and do not sit there chattering your jaws like a pair of castanets." ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... is time to 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

... that instruments of percussion are the natural exponents of such primitive music, and that, therefore, the East has its drum, gong and cymbals, Arabia its tambourine, Spain its castanets. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... into an armchair and chattered for an hour. The friends of the Costa Rican envoy were as amusing as himself, and in very much the same line. The mistress of the house had worn a yellow satin dress, and gold heels to her slippers, and at the close of the entertainment had sent for a pair of castanets, tucked up her petticoats, and danced a fandango, while the gentlemen sat cross-legged on the floor. "It was awfully low," Roderick said; "all of a sudden I perceived it, and bolted. Nothing of that kind ever amuses me ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... 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

... freshly arrived caravan pitching their tents after a long and weary journey. A snake-charmer was busy amusing an idle group of boys and girls in one of the small squares, and a group of dancing girls, with tambourines and castanets, looked wistfully at us, hoping to get an audience; but our yet unhonored breakfast awaited us, and the mountain excursion had ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... 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 ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... the seguidilla, which is more complicated, are generally seen on the stage only in Madrid, where they must charm all who can appreciate the poetry of motion. The dance of the peasant in Castile is always the jota Aragonesa. The part the tambourine and the castanets play in these dances must be seen and heard to be understood: they punctuate not only the music, but also the movement, the sentiment, and the refrain. The Andaluces excel in playing on the castanets. These are, according to Ford, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... 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 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 Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... things rotten draws his lays, From Carian flutings, catches of Meletus, Dance-music, dirges. You shall hear directly. Bring me the lyre. Yet wherefore need a lyre For songs like these? Where's she that bangs and jangles Her castanets? Euripides's Muse, Present yourself: ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... 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 his ears. ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... loping back to the town, the led horse shaking his saddle so that it rattled the stirrups like castanets as he galloped. "I don't care," she told herself again very emphatically, because she was quite sure that she did care—or that she would care if only she permitted herself to be so foolish. Manley overtook her then, and ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... 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 Salvation Army lassie. In fact, no act of missionary humility has struck our eyes as more pathetic ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... 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 ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... oftener gambling and dancing beneath the walls than keeping watch upon the battlements, and nothing was heard from morning till night but the noisy contests of cards and dice, mingled with the sound of the bolero or fandango, the drowsy strumming of the guitar, and the rattling of the castanets, while often the whole was interrupted by the loud brawl and fierce and ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... music, how the great festival at Bubastis in honour of the Egyptian Diana (Bast or Pascht), to whom the cat was sacred, was attended yearly by 700,000 people who came by water, the boats resounding with the clatter of castanets, the clapping of hands, and the soft tones of thousands of flutes. Again he tells us of music played during banquets, and speaks of a mournful song called Maneros. This, the oldest song of the Egyptians (dating back to the first dynasty), was symbolical of the passing away of life, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... the invitation of a 'ghazeeyeh'? She pauses. Shall she surprise, or shock, or only please? What shall the art that is older than the pyramids do for these kneeling Christians? The drum taps, the ney pipes, the mandolin twangs, her arms are extended—the castanets clink, a foot is thrust out, the bosom heaves, the waist trembles. What shall it be—the old serpent dance of the Nile, or the posturing of decorous courtship when the olives are purple in the time of the grape harvest? Her head, wreathed with coils of black hair, a red rose behind the left ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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 flutes. All were ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson

... the blue army sock till the needles rattled like castanets, and her ball bounded ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... waited, and 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

... talked very little. They listened rather to the sweet and innumerable sounds about them. The sound of the wind varied with every tree that it touched. Among the pines it moaned and sighed like the sea. Among the birches and aspens, it rattled the leaves like castanets; while from the borders of the ponds, which were numerous in this part of the forest, came gentle rustlings from the long, slender, silken-coated reeds. Jack learned to distinguish all these sounds and ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... him at the tilting match, or the 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 Love! why ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... the polka, the waltz, quadrilles, 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... again at Queensberry-house, where the Comtesse Emilie de Boufflers played on her harp, and the Princesse di Castelcigala, the Neapolitan minister's wife, danced one of her country dances, with castanets, very prettily, with her husband. Madame du Barry was there too, and I had a good deal of frank conversation with her about Monsieur de Choiseul; having been at Paris at the end of his reign and the beginning of hers, and of which ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... hips to the knees, which allowed their beautiful, slender legs and round muscular thighs to be easily seen. They first assumed poses of languid voluptuousness and indolent grace, then, waving branches of bloom and clinking castanets, shaped like the head of Hathor, striking tambourines with their little closed hands, or making the tanned skin of drums resound under their thumbs, they gave themselves up to swifter steps and to bolder postures; they pirouetted, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... lying on his back, 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 his feet in the hot air that blew up, like ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... her bloodless throat, As of a knife. Like rattle chill Of teeth, her castanets she smote Full in their faces awed ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier

... long. This evening the girl had errands to do for me. She came in here after her Sunday walk in the Campagna. I said: "Shall we read?" (Just then a band of young people passed along the street with a harmonica and a lot of castanets, and commenced a song in honour of Garibaldi. With all its simplicity, it sounded unspeakably affecting; I was quite softened.) She replied: "With pleasure." I thought to myself: "Now to see whether she remembers a word of what ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... these words 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

... 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 your feet to ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... twenty different boards or bits of white cloth and paper, and nailed here and there on the trees that lined the rough wood-road; the strains of an orchestra, formed of a guitar, banjo, castanets, Chinese fiddle, and tin cans, greeted them from a distance, but were properly allowed to die away in silence when the guest neared the tents. Everything wore a new and smiling face, and Elsie never came more dangerously ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... from his pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather than any devotional ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... 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

... — The Theatre. The orchestra plays the cachucha. Sound of castanets behind the scenes. The curtain rises, and discovers PRECIOSA in the attitude of commencing the dance. The cachucha. Tumult; hisses; cries of "Brava!" and "Afuera!" She falters and pauses. The music stops. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... had retired within the caravan, and emerged again with a pair of castanets in her hands. She advanced to Gonzague and made him a reverence. "Shall I dance for you, pretty gentleman?" ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... 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



Words linked to "Castanets" :   finger cymbals, clappers, plural form, plural, percussion instrument, bones, percussive instrument



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