Fifers

Five squealing fifers and three thundering cymbalists provided background noise for a middle-aged kender with a black topknot, who yelled through cupped hands from a bench atop a seriously listing wagon. ❋ Unknown (2010)

Clothed in the colors of the colonel, they were fifers or drummers and subject to military discipline. ❋ De Brantigny........................ (2008)

Not so the drummers and fifers attached to the companies, who suffered the cruel destiny of the massacre. ❋ De Brantigny........................ (2008)

The range also includes a pack of soldiers' wives or camp followers and I believe that I read that musicians (drummers and fifers) and zimmermen (pioneers) are planned for the future. ❋ Der Alte Fritz (2007)

Then he ordered out his whole army, horse, foot, and artillery; and set forth at the head of an innumerable host, and I should think twenty thousand drummers, trumpeters, and fifers. ❋ Unknown (2006)

The occasion was a seventieth-birthday dinner for John Greenleaf Whittier, a silver-bearded Brahmin to the core: protégé of the abolitionist editor William Lloyd Garrison; stalwart patron of the Atlantic; essayist; a founder of the Republican Party; sturdy versifier in rhyming tetrameter, his stanzas marching forward through the parlors and the firesides of the new republic like so many fifers and drummers. ❋ Ron Powers (2005)

He would appear to be under the impression we are a band of rapparee fifers. ❋ Jamie O’Neill (2002)

Two surgeons and their assistants, a chaplain, two quartermasters, four drummers, two fifers, and a private secretary completed the entourage. ❋ Benson Bobrick (1997)

In front marched two drummers and two fifers, beating on their drums and making such lively music that little Daffydowndilly would gladly have followed them to the end of the world. ❋ Ontario. Ministry Of Education (N/A)

Anne, Queen, impresses foreign seamen, arms of press-gang under, drummers and fifers pressed for navy in her reign, sailors unwilling to serve, ❋ Unknown (N/A)

Their fifers, with a brave show of humor, played, "The World's turned Upside Down." ❋ Emma Look Scott (N/A)

During this second visit he witnessed the arrival of the Pifferari, a band of shepherd-fifers, who each year left their flocks on the Calabrian hills, and journeyed to ❋ Francis Jameson Rowbotham (N/A)

There were two fifers and two drummers at their head, and also two flags, one the flag of the Brigade, and the other the flag of ❋ Upton Sinclair (1923)

They knew eight bars of one tune, and were proud of it, the fifers blowing with beef and pluck and the drummers thundering native fashion, which means that the only difference between their noise and a thunder-storm was in the tempo. ❋ Mundy, Talbot, 1879-1940 (1920)