I saw now to my great comfort that the man was beside himself with fury, and was swinging his arms wildly like a flail.

The viands, my son, scattered from his knife over the board, like chaff before the flail.

They neither plough nor sow; ne, fit for flail, E'er to the barn the nodding sheaves they drove; Yet theirs each harvest dancing in the gale, Whatever crowns the hill or smiles along the vale.

Whilst thou dost spend with friend and foe, At home che hold the plough by th' tail: Che dig, che delve, che zet, che zow, Che mow, che reap, che ply my flail.

[Exeunt. ACT IV., SCENE I. Enter ROBIN GOODFELLOW, in a suit of leather, close to his body; his face and hands coloured russet-colour, with a flail.

[They fight: ROBIN beateth the miller with a flail, and felleth him.

[SHORTHOSE pulleth JUG after him: ROBIN beateth the priest with his flail.

What, miller, are you up again? Nay, then, my flail shall never lin, Until I force one of us twain Betake him to his heels amain.

And he, by friar's lanthern led, Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set; When, in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy Flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could not end.

And taking the goose by the neck, he swung it round his head like a flail, and began to batter Pillichody about the face with it.

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst 20 Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

In the porch of the manor house, amid an accumulation of old traps and other curious odds and ends there hangs an ancient and much-worn flail.

As I was one day standing near some slaves who were threshing, the driver, thinking one of the women did not use her flail quick enough, struck her over the head: the end of the whip hit her in the eye.

As I was one day standing near some slaves who were threshing, the driver, thinking one of the women did not use her flail quick enough, struck her over the head: the end of the whip hit her in the eye.

The god wears the white crown with feathers, and he holds in his hands a sceptre, a crook, and whip, or flail, which typify sovereignty and dominion.

From the farmer we should have to take the reaper, the drill, the mowing machine, and every kind of improved rake and plow, and give him back the scythe, the cradle, and the flail.

It may well be that a man is at times horribly threshed by misfortunes, public and private: but the reckless flail of Fate, when it beats the rich sheaves, crushes only the straw; and the corn feels nothing of it and dances merrily on the floor, careless whether its way is to the mill or the furrow.

For ancient Decker prophesied long since, That in this pile should reign a mighty prince, Born for a scourge of wit, and flail of sense: To whom true dulness should some Psyches owe, 90 But worlds of Misers from his pen should flow; Humourists and hypocrites it should produce, Whole Raymond families, and tribes of Bruce.

This wily and experienced shark, not daring to turn and expose his more vulnerable parts to the formidable sword of his enemy, lashed at him with his heavy tail, as a man uses a flail, working the water into a syllabub.

At the time of St. Columba's ministry, England, which during the lifetime of St. Patrick had been Roman and Christian, had now under the iron flail of its Saxon conquerors lapsed back into Paganism.

The grain is cut with a sickle and threshed with a flail on the barn floor, as in Scripture times.

Next day he was thrashing corn in the barn and something upset him and pitched him head foremost across the flail.

He rose, and three times he was pitched like that across the flail, so he gave up and went home.

140 Like Spenser's Talus with his iron flail, He threatens ruin with his pond'rous tail; Dissolving at one stroke the batter'd boat, And down the men fall drenched in the moat; With every fierce encounter they are forced To quit their boats, and fare like men unhorsed.

And still that awful, flail-like sound went on and on, though all sound of voices had wholly ceased.