780-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Ambulances and cliffs Ira Rimson pointed out that an even earlier reference exists to the idiom ambulance at the bottom of the cliff than the one from 1920 that I quoted; it appears to be the original from which all other references follow. It's a poem with the title A Fence or an Ambulance, which appears online under various authors' names (or none) and in a number of versions, but is now perhaps best known in the one sung by John Denver. The poem is by the English temperance activist Joseph Malins and dates from 1895. It's recorded in his biography of 1932 but the earliest appearance that I've found is over his name in a US newspaper of December 1901. The poem is an allegory. A community debates whether to build a fence at the top of a cliff to prevent people falling or to provide an ambulance at the bottom to treat the injuries resulting from falls. This is the last verse in its 1901 appearance:

Better guide well the young than reclaim them when old,

For the voice of true wisdom is calling:

"To rescue the fallen is good, but 'tis best

To prevent other people from falling."

Better close up the source of temptation and crime

Than deliver from dungeon or galley;

Better put a strong fence round the top of the cliff.

Than an ambulance down in the valley!