Baleful and Baneful
Tricksy Twins
When I was a young seafaring lad, the captain of my ship once asked me ‘Have you learned how to swear yet?’ At the time, this rather strange question confirmed the rumors that the skipper of the good ship Týr ranked high in the hierarchy of odd ducks. More recently, memories of the verb he used is helps me distinguish between ‘baleful’ and ‘baneful’.
In modern Icelandic, bölva covers both connotations of the English word ‘curse’. That is, it means both ‘use bad language’ and ‘call upon dark powers to inflict harm upon someone’. In Viking times, however, all concerned knew that bǫlva came from bǫl, a noun that described said harm, and, in particular, the damage, from grave illness to the premature curdling of milk, that from the handiwork of a bǫlvasmiðr [curse-smith].1
A cousin of bölva dwelt in Anglo-Saxon lands. Variously called balu and bealu, this word would, in the fullness of time, evolve into bale. Thus, in the Canterbury Tales, the canon’s servant was able to end his monologue with the benediction for all men of his station: ‘God send every good man bote of his bale’.2
After decades of being confused with a big pile of hay, bale eventually went the way of ‘forsooth’. However, before taking leave of the English-speaking world, it gave us, by way of a parting gift, the word ‘baleful’. Thus, in 1747 or so, Thomas Gray, who must have been great fun at parties, was able to write, in his Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College:3
Alas, regardless of their doom,
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond to-day:
Yet see how all around ‘em wait,
The ministers of human fate,
And black misfortune’s baleful train.