"Roarer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it is. By and by you won't dare say your soul's your own. I pity you, Charlie, upon my word I do. Ned Tupney was married a few days ago, did you know it? and he's got a devil of a mother-in-law on his hands, a regular roarer—" ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... differentiate, at first, with exceeding slowness; the children's community changes more slowly even than the adults'—its weapons continue to be the bow and arrow, long after adults have discarded them; and the bull-roarer continues sacred in its eyes to a period when the adult community has not only discarded its use but forgotten its meaning. In its tales and myths it may preserve the memory of a stage of morality which the adult community ...
— The Idea of God in Early Religions • F. B. Jevons
... it from his very mout' and even the divil would hardly be such a blackguard as to lie about his own name. Och! he's a roarer, sure enough; and then for the tusks you mintion, I didn't see 'em, with my eyes; but the crathure has a mouth that might hould ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... forms of divination. One of them has been already described, but they have others. For example, they put a powder like sulphur in a piece of bamboo tube and kindle a fire under it. Then an old man takes a bull-roarer and taps with it on the bamboo tube, naming all the sorcerers in the neighbouring villages. He at the mention of whose name the fire catches the powder and blazes up is the guilty man. Another way of detecting the culprit is to attach the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... more earnest than agreeable invited one and all to "come ashore and have the conceit taken out" of them. From the descriptive catalogue he gave of his own merits, the passengers gathered that he was "a roarer," "a regular bruiser," "half alligator, half steamboat, half snapping-turtle, with a leetle dash of chain-lightning thrown in," and were evidently afraid of him; when the Judge, who had been quietly smoking on the deck, stepped out upon the quay, and, approaching the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... of the fresh clover was quite delightful, after the scentless air of the dry, sterile Despoblado. Whilst staying in the town I heard an account from several of the inhabitants, of a hill in the neighbourhood which they called "El Bramador," — the roarer or bellower. I did not at the time pay sufficient attention to the account; but, as far as I understood, the hill was covered by sand, and the noise was produced only when people, by ascending it, put the sand in motion. The same ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... brought out this point, puts it, "Marriage-rites of union are essentially identical with love charms," and he refers in illustration to the custom of the Australian Arunta, among whom the man or woman by making music on the bull-roarer compels a person of the opposite sex to court him or her, the marriage being thus completed. (E. Crawley, The Mystic ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... expected to find it near-seal, or some other base imitation; and he squints under each hoof for the grand hailing sign of distress; and he peeks down his throat for dark secrets. If the horse passes this degree the buyer drives him twenty or thirty miles, expecting him to turn out a roarer, or to find that he balks, or shies, or goes lame, or develops some other horse nonsense. If after all that there are no bad symptoms, he offers fifty less than the price asked, on general principles, and for fear he has ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... look at him once. Ain't he a ring-tailed roarer? Seems to me a tree big as him must be awful proud just o' bein' a tree. Ain't nothin' 'raound here kin see's fur as he kin, anyways." "My luck again," I thought to myself. I knew I could not be mistaken in ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... altered the mould. Still the old shabby light-loves, the old greed, the old luxury and squalor. Still the unconquerable superstition that now seeks to tell fortunes by the cards, and, in your time, resorted to the sorceress with her magical "bull-roarer" or turndun. {6} ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang |
