gourd rattles

Noun

gourd rattle (plural gourd rattles)

1. A rattle made from a hollowed-out dried gourd into which dried seeds or gravel is placed.
   • He made gourd-rattles (known in ever so many parts of the world) in which he rattled dried seeds or small pebbles with a most beguiling and rain-like insistence; or sometimes, like the priests of Baal in the Bible, he would cut himself with knives till the blood fell upon the ground in great drops...1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 72