The title of The Woodcutter and the Trees covers a complex of fables that are of

West Asia Western Asia, West Asia, or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost subregion of the larger geographical region of Asia, as defined by some academics, UN bodies and other institutions. It is almost entirely a part of the Middle East, and includes Ana ...

n and Greek origins, the latter ascribed to

Aesop Aesop ( or ; , ; c. 620–564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as ''Aesop's Fables''. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales c ...

. All of them concern the need to be wary of harming oneself through misplaced generosity.

The Fables

Western Asia and Greece

One of the earliest allusions to a fable of this kind occurs in the story of

Ahiqar The ''Story of Aḥiqar'', also known as the ''Words of Aḥiqar'', is a story first attested in Imperial Aramaic from the 5th century BCE on papyri from Elephantine, Egypt, that circulated widely in the Middle and the Near East.Christa Mül ...

, a royal counsellor to late

Assyria Assyria ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the ...

n kings who is betrayed by his adopted son Nadan. When the young man begs for a second chance he is answered with a string of reasons, drawing on West Asian folklore, why this would be useless. Among them is the accusation that 'Thou hast been to me like the tree that said to its woodcutters, "If something of me were not in your hands, ye had not fallen upon me”.' This refers to the fact that the axes of the woodmen have wooden shafts and the trees have therefore contributed to their own doom. A number of proverbs derive from the story, with the general meaning of being to blame for one's own misfortune. They include the

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

'the axe goes to the wood from whence it borrowed its helve,' of which there are

Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...

and

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Turkish ‘When the axe came into the Forest, the trees said "The handle is one of us".' Wenceslas Hollar - The woodman 2

In the Greek cultural area, which at one time included all of West Asia, there were three fables dealing with the relations between trees and woodcutters. In one of these, numbered 302 in the

Perry Index The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the Un ...

, the oaks complain about their treatment to

Zeus Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label= genitive Boeotian Aeolic and Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label= genitive el, Δίας, ''Días'' () is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek reli ...

, the king of the gods, who answers that they have only themselves to blame for supplying the wood for their axe staves. A different fable of similar meaning is The Eagle Wounded by an Arrow, numbered 276 in the Perry Index. In it an Eagle complains of being wounded by an arrow vaned with its own feathers. Commentaries on these fables point out that suffering is increased by the knowledge that it is one's own fault.

Trust betrayed

In another variant of the theme, a woodman comes into the forest and begs the trees 'to give him a handle made of the hardest wood. The other trees selected the wood of the wild olive. The man took the handle and fitted it to his axe. Then, without a moment's hesitation, he began to chop down the trees' mighty branches and trunks, taking whatever he wanted. The oak tree then said to the ash, 'It serves us right, since we gave our enemy the handle he asked for!' This text comes from the Mediaeval Latin fable collection of

Ademar of Chabannes Ademar is a masculine Germanic name, ultimately derived from ''Audamar'', as is the German form Otmar. It was in use in medieval France, Latinized as ''Adamarus'', and in modern times has been popular in French, Spanish and Portuguese-speaking cou ...

, who comments upon it, 'You should think twice before offering anything to your enemies' (''Ut cogites ante ne hosti aliqua praestes''). This version was taken up early by the Anglo-French poet

Marie de France Marie de France (fl. 1160 to 1215) was a poet, possibly born in what is now France, who lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an unknown court, but she and her work were almost certainly known at the royal court o ...

and was also preferred by 15th century collectors of fables in European vernaculars like

Heinrich Steinhowel Heinrich may refer to: People * Heinrich (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name) * Heinrich (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) *Hetty (given name), a given name (including a list of peo ...

and

William Caxton William Caxton ( – ) was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England, in 1476, and as a printer to be the first English retailer of printed books. His parentage a ...

. During

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

times it was made the subject of poems by the German

Neo-Latin New Latin (also called Neo-Latin or Modern Latin) is the revival of Literary Latin used in original, scholarly, and scientific works since about 1500. Modern scholarly and technical nomenclature, such as in zoological and botanical taxonomy ...

ists

Hieronymus Osius Hieronymus Osius was a German Neo-Latin poet and academic about whom there are few biographical details. He was born about 1530 in Schlotheim and murdered in 1575 in Graz. After studying first at the university of Erfurt, he gained his master's ...

and

Pantaleon Candidus Pantaleon Candidus was a theologian of the Reformed Church and a Neo-Latin author. He was born on 7 October 1540 in Ybbs an der Donau and died on 3 February 1608 in Zweibrücken. Life and works Pantaleon Weiss was born the 14th child of a landown ...

. Jean de la Fontaine also made it the subject of his ''La forêt et le bûcheron'' (''Fables'' X11.16), translated by Elizur Wright as "The Woods and the Woodman". In his telling, the woodman breaks his promise to work further off and not harm his benefactors. A version based on this was set for accompanied children's voices by the composer Rudolf Schmidt-Wunstorf (b. 1916). This final fable was retold by

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...

in a six-line poem included in his

Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

collection ''Kanika'' (1899). Later, he condensed it as Poem 71 in his English-language collection ''Stray Birds'' (1916): :The woodcutter's axe begged for its handle from the tree. ::The tree gave it. In the Bengali collection, the poem was titled "Politics", and with this clue the reader was expected to interpret the fable in the context of the time as a parable of the imperial stripping of Indian resources.Peter Linebaugh, ''The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All'', University of California 2008
p.146ff
/ref>

References

External links

Illustrations from books dating fro
the 15th-20th centuries
{{Aesop Woodcutter and the Trees Woodcutter and the Trees Woodcutter and the Trees