an excerpt from Maine Lingo: Boiled Owls, Billdads, & Wazzats by John Gould

DRIVE A NAIL ON SUNDAY  That would profane the Lord’s Day, and aboard ship was unlucky. A vessel on which “no hand is asked to drive a nail on Sunday” was taking a landward phrase to sea, and it meant the labors where light on Sundays. With a thought to the Maine facility with imagery, it is pleasant at this point to imagine a quiet, pious community observing its Sabbath while one non-conformist citizen attempts to hammer a nail secretly.