Re: USAGE: "privilege" as "permission"

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> There's a song on Robert Palmer's last studio album called "Stella",
> which has some interesting English.  I get the impression it is a
> traditional song from somewhere, rather than an original composition,
> and he sings it with an Island lilt, but beyond that I don't know
> anything.
>
> (...)
>
> This use of "I give you privilege" is novel to me, as is the form of
> the admonishment "don't have no/any sympathy".  The latter would
> almost sound natural IML with "for me" appended, and maybe it was
> truncated for metrical reasons, but it still seems slightly off in
> context.
>
> Anyone know anything about the song or the idoms?  Google turned up 4
> hits for "i give you privilege" - oddly enough, none of them the
> lyrics to the song in question.  Two of the hits - dialog in a story
> by a Swedish author (presumably non-native English) and lyrics in a
> religious song (dialogue attributed to God therein, presumably
> intentionally done up in "archaic" or "Biblical" style) I discounted
> for the parenthetical reasons.  The other two are more interesting:
> there's a line in an 1851 novel where "privilege" is clearly a drop-in
> replacement for "permission": "I give you privilege to open it".  And
> there's a modern use - a quotation in an article about an art exhibit,
> in which a photographer says "I'm an insider, so I give you privilege
> to that world".  Different meaning, but still an odd idiom.  The
> photographer's name is Heinrich, but I got the impression she's
> American, not German.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
    Hi!

    In medieval times privilege was a law (lex) applying to one person
(privus) alone (or few?), like letting a vassal of yours to mint coins,
or a monastery doing whatever it was not supposed to do : ). I guess the
word is used in this sense... then, to give privilege is like saying she
allows him to do unholy things ; ).

    Well, about the "don't have any sympathy", I can just think that it
is used in the greek sense: "you doesn't share the same (syn-) affection
(pathos) of mine", like when someone dies, and we say we are sympathetic
to the family. But In this case she wants him to be sympathetic for
quite another pathos, as you said.

Edgard.