affear

Her whole body is bent to flight, but she is 'affear'd of her own feet.'

Yet Again Max Beerbohm 1914

‘Afeard’, used by Spenser, is the regular participle of the old verb to ‘affear’, still existing as a law term, as

English Past and Present Richard Chenevix Trench 1846

Page 83 you a detail of events which preserved my life in those accidents. some of them you my reader may think incredible but let me say to you that they are all facts the first of which is that I use to have to go to mill ounce a week and had an old grey mare which I had to ride ever I went and she (the old mare) had I think as much sense as a great many people has and when ever she took it in her head not to be rode she would not suffer you to come near her and she would go nowhere but in the middle of the fields where she would run a person a half a day to catch her so she got this notion in her head one day and appeared that she was determid that I should not ride her so I had the same notion in my head and was determid that I would ride her and so we began our race which we kept up for the space of about 2 hours at which time we were both very well beatting for she had beat me runing and I had beat her witting by toaling her with an ear of corn into an old smoke house which stood in the field, so after we both got in there I had determid as soon as we got togather to settle the matter between ourselves without carioing it any further but I suppose that she had made up her mind quiete to the reverse as she showed by her action after words. for when I had done all I had to do by giving her about 30 lashes with a large whip which I had with me and add to her persicution I had put on a very nice spur which I had slipt out of the harness room now when all of this was done I was perfectly sattisfied in my own mind that the thing was done with nor did I intend to say any more about the matter but to my surprise when I led her out of the smoke house and mounted her she just showed me what she intended to do and that the thing should go further before it could be done with and that it should go there sooner than I would like: so off she went with me on her back as hard as she could go the distance of half a mile when she came to an apple orched when again to my suprise she turned into it and ran right under a limb and struck my head right smack dash against it which blow knocked me out for dead upon the ground and there I laided I know not how long but when I come to myself my antigonist was still standing by me waiting for my recoverry that she might perform the duty which she had delayed so long by this great combat between myself and her. it was god's mercy she did not kill me in that affear so that is one thing, and now for the next in which I was preserved when I was a boy I was very much afraid of dogs and it appears to me that all the dogs in the neighbourhood knew it so every where I went the dogs were all ways after me. and poor me I use to run myself almost to death to keep them from catching

Fields's Observations: The Slave Narrative of a Nineteenth-Century Virginian Fields 1980