Ruin
Quote
We have seen that the ‘Golden Stool’ was never allowed to come in direct contact with the Earth—it must be placed upon an elephant’s skin. The feet of the King of Ashanti were likewise never to touch the ground, ‘lest a great famine should come upon the nation’. Hence he always was followed about by a servant bearing a spare pair of sandals, lest the band across the instep of those he was wearing broke; and when he slipped his sandals from his feet at the Adae ceremony, when propitiating his ancestral ghosts, he stood upon his sandals so that his feet should not touch the ground.
- Source: Rattray, R. S. Ashanti. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923.
- Culture: Akan
- Location: Africa