Posted by Ed Kiser on December 15, 2003 at 21:02:05 from 152.163.252.196 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Re: BAIL or BALE? posted by Robert Hill on December 14, 2003 at 19:33:22:
A curious aspect of this is that in all three of these referenced
books, both the "JAIL" and the "GAOL" spellings are found.
Instances of "JAIL".
---------- BSCH10.TXT
of boat builders... Ought to be in jail they ought... Forty
---------- GNCH22.TXT
jail first," he said after a pause.
---------- GNCH24.TXT
what the law is in these parts. The owner may be judge, jury, jailer and
---------- PMCH22.TXT
All the better. The more she tries to get Timothy in jail and the
=============================================
Instances of "GAOL".
---------- BSCH13.TXT
we shan't be putting you in gaol."
---------- BSCH17.TXT
say. 'Getting into gaol more like.'"
---------- BSCH21.TXT
place and just out of gaol at that. And what's all this Tedder
---------- BSCH26.TXT
"I've heard enough about you lads to put you all in gaol for
---------- GNCH29.TXT
his Gaels into allies instead of gaolers. She had pursued the egg-
---------- MLCH16.TXT
"You have been much in gaol?" said Miss Lee coldly.
---------- PDCH33.TXT
cut-throats loose from gaol and after him with guns. And just then he
---------- PMCH18.TXT
"A door banging so that the gaolers know there's an escape,"
---------- WHCH4.TXT
go,' said the gaoler, and, as the unsuspecting maiden crept into
============================================
I would have felt that the difference in these two words is simply
the difference between American English and English English (there has
to be a better name for the language of the mother country...) where
the "JAIL" spelling was American, and "GAOL" was... that other kind.
And yet, we see "JAIL" used here by an English author, in speech
attributed to English people, as if that is they way they would have
spelled it. Then, in those same books, by the same author, we see
the "GAOL" version as well. Perhaps this is Ransome trying to write
in dialect again, that is, Nancy says "jail" and Dorothea says "gaol",
as so do the Death and Glories. Missee Lee says GAOL, as she learned
English as a foreigner, but from a British School, so was taught the
British spelling. Yet how is it that Nancy would say "jail"?
Perhaps here I could slightly mis-quote another English playwrite:
"What is in a name? A rose, by any other name, is still a thornbush."
-- or something like that...
Ed Kiser, South Florida