Seamus Heaney describes a circle to convey the sounds of the Ulster accent, drawing an image of tangential consonants and rolling vowels.  Lovely.

Our tongue strikes the tangent of the consonant rather more than it rolls the circle of the vowel. 

For a rich selection of other Heaney similes and metaphors, see our celebration of Beowulf, both his version and that of Kevin Crossley-Holland.

Source: Seamus Heaney, Finders Keepers: Selected prose 1971-2001 (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), p. 17

Photo credit: SCAPIN at pixabay