Tam′bour-ine′.
（
Music.) An instrument of percussion, resembling a shallow drum with one head, and surrounded by small bells.
It is also known as the
tambour Basque, and is a favorite instrument of the
Italian peasants, the gypsies, and Basques.
It is played in three ways: by striking; by rubbing its parchment with the ends of the finger, which gives a tremulous sound, and a jingling of the bells in the edge; by continuous rubbing with the thumb, which gives a wild, trembling sound.
The peculiar song of some insects, as the katydid, is produced in an analogous manner by the rubbing together of their wings.
On a sculpture at Dendera, in
Egypt, is shown a musician playing on the tambourine.
The
Egyptian mode of playing was similar to the modern; and from the position in which it is held after striking, it is thought to have had the same tinkling disks in the rim. Among the ancient
Egyptians its shapes were very various.
The
timbrel of Miriam, the priestess, and sister of
Moses and Aaron, was, no doubt, an Egyptian instrument.
She and her attendants played on timbrels and sang the antiphone to the song of
Moses and the congregation.
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Tambourine. |
She “took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.”
The ladies are now excluded from participation in Hebrew religious rites.
The
tabret, or
timbrel, probably resembled the dasabooka of the Arabs, — a sort of
tam-tam, or hand-drum; the
tympanon of the Greeks.
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Arabian Deff and castanets. |
Euripides celebrates “the skin-stretched circle of the tambourine of
Phrygia, of the great mother
Rhea.”
[
2485]
The modern Arabian
deff does not differ materially from the
European.
It has a number of tinkling disks of metal set in slots in the rim, and is played by thrumming and shaking.
The name is derived from the Arabic
altambor, and immediately is the diminutive of the
French tambour, being considered a shallow drum with one head.
