The Trees and The Axe

Character Index | Proverb Index

The Trees and The Axe

Nothing bothers a man more than to see he has aided his own undoing.

A Man came into a Wood one day with an axe in his hand, and begged all the Trees to give him a small branch which he wanted for a particular purpose. The Trees were good-natured and gave him one of their branches. What did the Man do but fix it into the axe head, and soon set to work cutting down tree after tree. Then the Trees saw how foolish they had been in giving their enemy the means of destroying themselves.

Townsend version

A man came into a forest and asked the Trees to provide him a handle for his axe. The Trees consented to his request and gave him a young ash-tree. No sooner had the man fitted a new handle to his axe from it, than he began to use it and quickly felled with his strokes the noblest giants of the forest. An old oak, lamenting when too late the destruction of his companions, said to a neighboring cedar, "The first step has lost us all. If we had not given up the rights of the ash, we might yet have retained our own privileges and have stood for ages."

L'Estrange version

A carpenter that had got the iron-work of an axe allready, went to the next forrest to beg only so much wood as would make a handle to't. The matter seem'd so small that the request was easily granted; but when the timber-trees came to find that the whole wood was to be cut down by the help of this handle, There's no remedy, they cry'd, but patience, when people are undone by their own folly.

Moral

Nothing goes nearer a man in his misfortunes, then to find himself undone by his own folly, or but any way accessory to his own ruine.

Character Index | Proverb Index

Diverse Info | Travels | Recipies | Aesop's Fables | Rosary