THE "NAILING" OF THE IDOL. fro ME EDITOR OF TUE
"EFECTATOR."1 Sin,—Your correspondent "F." writes in the Spectator of September 11th of the curious custom at present in vogue in Berlin of the faithful being "invited to drive nails into the wooden statue of Hindenburg as a token' of gratitude." I remember seeing in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford one or two wooden figures of men absolutely full of nails of all sizes. They came from an African tribe, and I WAS told that when a man had an enemy he made a wooden effigy of him, and drove all the nails he could get into it, the idea being that each nail did the man some harm, and when the effigy was full of nails he died. It seems a strange idea of the "faithful" in Berlin to think that driving nails into a wooden tatue is "a token of gratitude."—I am, Sir, Jao.,
H. M. G.
Previous page
