Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
The flanking parties of horse were forced in upon the centre, and though, as even Turner grants, they fought with desperation, a general flight was the result. But when they fell there was none to sing their coronach or wail the death-wail over them.
It rose again, louder than before, for those from whom it came were nearing the house a horribly wailing sound, ringing out in the silence of the night. Mrs. O'Moore crouched into her chair again, and hid her terrified face. She was not Irish, and had never heard that sound but once, and that was when her child died. "She is right," cried her husband, the O'Moore; "that is the death-wail.
"You hear it? That death-wail tells all the future holds for you. Before yonder red shadow of a sun" pointing to the sun, which shone dimly through the smoke "shall set, the bravest of the Mollalies will be dead. Before the moon wanes to its close, the Willamette race will have passed away. Think you Multnomah's seat is empty?
And not till then was a sound heard among the silent and impassive throng on the river-bank. But when the burning canoe had vanished utterly, when black and starless night fell again on wood and water, the death-wail burst from the Indians with one impulse and one voice, a people's cry for its lost chief, a great tribe's lament for the strength and glory that had drifted from it, never to return.
The wind had risen outside, and was wailing mournfully around the cottage. The young girl shivered to hear it. "Sounds like a death-wail, don't it?" said Mrs. Olmstead, noticing the movement. "When the wind hes thet sorter long scream in it, it allers means trouble, and your pa off for the long fish to-morrow!"
So they bowed beneath her word, and made ready while the women of his household raised a death-wail for Pharaoh, and criers standing on the high towers proclaimed the accession of Neter-Tua, Morning-Star of Amen, Glorious in Ra, Hathor, Strong in Beauty, as sole Lord and Sovereign of the North and South, and of Egypt's subject lands.
Multnomah heard it as he sat in council with his chiefs, and there was something in it that shook even his iron heart; for all the wilder, more superstitious elements of the Indians thrilled to two things, the war-cry and the death-wail. He dismissed his chiefs and went to his lodge. On the way he encountered Tohomish, lurking, as was his wont, under the shadow of the trees.
I remember one night hearing a woman's voice wailing a queer Hindoo chant. It came from the barrack-room door. Afterwards I discovered it was Hawk sitting on his trestle bed cross-legged, with a bit of sacking and ashes on his head imitating the death-wail of an Indian woman for her dead husband.
"The rebel chief's wife wailing the death-wail for her husband," was the low reply; and in that way the tribes knew that the sentence had been carried out. Many bands were there, of many languages, but all knew what that death-wail meant the instant it fell upon their ears.
When, half an hour later, Kenkenes entered a cross avenue leading to a great square in which the temple stood, he found the roadway filled with people, crowding about a group of disheveled women. These were shrieking, wildly tearing their hair, beating themselves and throwing dust upon their heads. Kenkenes immediately surmised that there was something more than the usual death-wail in this.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking