The Sorcerers Apprentice is an old piece of music written by Paul Dukas in 1897, but the story originally dates back to about 100AD. Used by WaltDisney? to make the ground breaking Fantasia in 1940.

It tells the story of how a sourcerer leaves his house one day, perhaps to go into town or similar, leaving his apprentice to clean the floor while he's away. The sorcerer's apprentice, after watching the sourcerer all day, decides that he'll use what little magic he has learnt to make a broom do the work for him. He casts his spell, and commands the broom to fetch some water from the well outside and put it in the cauldron. The broom obligies and the apprentice, pleased with himself, finds a nice large chair and curls up and goes to sleep where he dreams about commanding the powers of the universe: the stars, the weather and the sea. Finally he wakes up to realise that not only was it a dream that he was controlling the water, but the water was lapping at his feet from the now overflowing cauldron. He gets up and goes to speak the command word to the broom to stop only to realise he's forgotten it! He attempts to stop the broom, but the magic is too strong, and the broom continues on it's way. Eventually in an act of utter desperation he grabs a nearby axe and smashes the broom into hundreds of little pieces. Relieved he goes back to start cleaning up the mess, when the pieces of the broom stand up and all start fetching water. The poor apprentice overwelmed is out of ideas when the sorcerer arrives home. The sourcerer is of course rather pissed at finding his house flooded and casts the counter spell. The sorcerer appears somewhat understanding of the situation (did he do something similar when he was an apprentice?) and lets the poor student off with only having to clean the water logged house.

This is surprisingly relevant with respect to computer science. Your programs do precisely what you tell them to do, even if thats not what you want them to do. So, you should AlwaysMountaScratchMonkey, and BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor. It's also created some terms like SorcerersApprenticeMode? which have entered compusci jargon.