Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !

Updated: June 4, 2025


Yonder a child thrown to the ground screamed shrilly, there a dog trodden under the feet of the crowd howled piteously. So clear and resonant were the shouts of joy that they rose high above the flutes and tambourines, the cymbals and lutes of the musicians, who followed the man approaching in the robes of a god.

A spiral staircase winds like a corkscrew from floor to floor; we ascend by easy stages, through various grades of hunger, from the economic appetite on the first floor, where the plebeian stomach is stayed with tea and lentils, even to the very housetop, where are administered comforting syrups and a menu that is sweetened throughout its length with the twang of lutes, the clash of cymbals, and the throb of the shark-skin drum.

The old ladies of the court avoid idleness by needlework, spinning of silk, or continual reading of the Holy Scriptures or of histories, and writing diverse volumes of their own, or translating foreign works into English or Latin; and the young ladies, when they are not waiting on her majesty, "in the mean time apply their lutes, citherns, pricksong, and all kinds of music."

When the door was closed behind him and his companion, when fresh rose-garlands had been brought for the necks of the company, when lotus blossoms decorated their heads, and the beakers were refilled, a choir of musicians came in, who played on harps, lutes, flutes, and small drums.

Besides the six-stringed harp or wagon, much more complex harps or lutes of thirteen or twenty-five strings were used, and in general there was a great increase in the number and variety of instruments. Indeed, we may list as many as twenty kinds of musical instruments and three or four times as many varieties of dance in the Heian epoch.

He also says in his twelfth book, that the ancients made many goodly works of ivory or elephants teeth; such as tables, tressels or couches, posts of houses, rails, lattices for windows, idols of their gods, and many other things of ivory, either coloured or uncoloured, and intermixed with various kinds of precious woods; in which manner at this day are made chairs, lutes, virginals, and the like.

Some had pipes and some had lutes and some had tambourines, and all were singing as loud as they could and making as much noise as they might, and when they came into the open space hard by the fountain they paused for a while in their progress, and broke into as lively a morris-dance as ever I had seen skipped.

On the days they held their feasts to the Virgin they never paid any heed to the canons in the choir, and they greatly disturbed all the offices with 'rabeles, lutes and disorderly songs. If the canons begged them to be silent, they replied that it was they in the choir who ought to keep silence, considering that they were in their own chapel, which was far more ancient than the Cathedral.

All on board were much amused at this freak, and stood silent, as if waiting for a reply. In a few moments the music of a harp was heard, and such was the skill and delicacy with which it was played, that the very air seemed filled with mysterious spirits, who, having carried off the lutes of some companion lovers, were chanting dulcet requiems.

Me thought I saw a thousand Cupids slide from heaven, And landing here made this their scene of revells, Clapping their golden feathers which kept tyme While their owne feet strook musike to their dance, As they had trod and touched so many Lutes.

Word Of The Day

vine-capital

Others Looking