<P> The title of The Woodcutter and the Trees covers a complex of fables of Greek and West Asian origin that are ascribed to Aesop . All of them concern the need to be wary of harming oneself through misplaced generosity . </P> <P> One of the earliest allusions to a fable of this kind occurs in the story of Ahiqar, a royal counsellor to late Assyrian 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' the axe goes to the wood from whence it borrowed its helve, of which there are Kannada and Urdu equivalents, and the Turkish' When the axe came into the Forest, the trees said "The handle is one of us".' </P> <P> 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 oaks complain about their treatment to Zeus, the king of the gods, who answers that they have only themselves to blame for supplying the wood for their axe staves . </P>

When the ax came into the forest meaning
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