Appendix II - Danger
THE primitive meaning of dominiarium and daunger is certainly lordship or dominion. Thus:
Ancren Riwle (see O.E.D. s.v. ‘Danger’) þolieð ofte daunger of swuche oðerwhule Þet muhte beon ower Þrel.
Rom. de la Rose 1033 (of Richece). Toz li monz iert en son dangier.
From this root, so to speak, two trunks of semantic development seem to grow according as we consider the lord’s power to act (and therefore to hurt) or his power to give (and therefore to withhold). From A (power to hurt) we get:
1. (Undefined) power or influence over:
Chaucer, Prol. 663.
In daunger hadde he at his owne gyse
The yonge girles of the diocyse.
2. Legal power over, specially the power of creditor over debtor:
Shakespeare, Merch. IV. i. 180. You stand within his danger, do you not?
3. Power of offensive weapons within a certain area:
Berners’ Froissart, clxii. The archers shot so wholly together that none durst come in their dangers.
4. Hence peril, ‘danger’ in the modern sense.
From B (power to withhold) we get:
1. Churlishness or niggardliness:
Chrétien, Yvain, 5304.
Del pain avons a grant dangier.
Rom. de la Rose, 478.
Car li lieus d’oisiaus herbergier
N’estoit ne dangereus ne chiches.
2. Refusal, or difficult granting, of love:
Rom. de la Rose, 9091
(The jealous husband, to his wife).
Car quant je vous vueil embracier
Pour vous baisier et soulacier . . .
Tant soupirez, tant vous plaigniez
E faites si le dangereus.
Chaucer (W. of Bath) D. 513.
I trowe I loved him beste for that he
Was of his love daungerous to me.
3. Obstinacy, insubordination, lack of humility in an inferior:
Rom. de la Rose, 1889.
Il est fos qui moine dangier
Vers celui qu’il doit losengier.
4. The harsh or ‘difficult’, as opposed to the affable and obliging:
Rom. de la Rose, 4017.
Se Jalosie est vers vos dure
E vos fait enui et laidure,
Faites li engrestié encontre;
E dou dangier qu’ele vos montre
Vos vengiez . . .
Bruce, v. 280.
and can him pray
That he wald cum all anerly . . .
And he but danger till him gais.
The A senses hardly concern us. Of the B senses it will be seen that only sense 2 gives any countenance to the theory that ‘danger’ means pudor; and even in sense 2 ‘danger’ is connected with pudor only as an effect with a possible cause. Pudor is one of the things that may make a woman display danger; but it will be noticed that there is no question of modesty as the ground of refusal in either of the two quotations. In the first quotation the lady is ‘dangerous’ because she is sulking; in the second the man may be ‘dangerous’ for almost any reason except pudor. Senses 3 and 4 are closely connected with the idea of pride, distance, and excessive or formidable dignity, and thus fall in with the meaning I give to ‘danger’ in the Roman. Sense 1 seems at first far removed from this, and I should hesitate to plead that the modern uses of difficult and difficile as a social term provide a kind of bridge, if it were not for one remarkable fact. The Manuscripts of the Roman at l. 479 vary between dangereus and desdeigneus: which I take to be probable, though not certain, evidence that scribe or poet felt the two words to be neighbours in meaning as well as in form.
It must always be remembered (and here again I refer the reader to Barfield’s Poetic Diction) that the various senses we take out of an ancient word by analysis existed in it as a unity. There is therefore no question of deciding in which of the senses given above the word danger is used on each occasion: it is like asking a modern Frenchman to choose between English ‘like’ and English ‘love’ every time he uses the verb aimer. There are times when he could so decide; but on most occasions the question simply does not exist in the meaning-system of his language. Thus, the admirable description of ‘danger’ given in Skelton’s Bouge of Court (stanzas 10 et seq.) is not a picture of Danger in any one of our B senses more than another, but of Danger simpliciter. What is even more remarkable is that Spenser seems conscious of no inconsistency in giving us the A sense in F.Q. III. xii. 11 and the B sense in IV. x. 17 et seq.