gourd rattle

plural gourd rattles

1. A rattle made from a hollowed-out dried gourd into which dried seeds or gravel is placed.

   1 more example

   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 suggestive of an oncoming thunder-shower.

   1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., published 1921, page 72