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The ash tree, also, had its worshippers among the dwellers in high northern latitudes, and it was under the dense branches of an enormous ash tree that terrible Odin and his following of deities appeared in a dark cloud.
Thus Tree worship appeared once more. It has ever since continued to flourish more or less in Germany, and even now exists to a certain extent. But it is not the oaks, nor the beech, nor the elm, nor the ash tree, which in our day receives the worship of the young especially—but the lime tree. The admirers of the lime tree carry their fervor to fanaticism and their fanaticism to murder. I had been unwilling to believe this.
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But this morning I opened my newspaper and there I found an article, dated December 30, 1860, and stating that a young man from Pforzheim, in the Palatinate, attempted to murder the mayor of his town by means of a revolver, the four barrels of which were loaded with as many leaden balls. When he was arrested, he declared that he had personally nothing to say against the burgomaster, but that the latter had recently ordered certain lime trees to be cut down, that the good people of Pforzheim idolized these trees, and that he had determined to punish him for such profanation.
The paper added: “This young man belongs to an honorable family, his antecedents are excellent, and he has never shown the slightest symptom of mental derangement.”