Cowboy Lingo?

[James A. Landau]

original message follows:

Date:    Mon, 1 Dec 2003 01:54:50 -0800
From:    Chris Dacolias <hepkel10 at YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Re: Cowboy Lingo?

My question regards a dialect spoken in the west after
the civil war and before the turn of the century in
the American west.  Some might call this a version of
"cowboy language".  This dialect was consistently used
during the recent film "Open Range" a western set in
1888 starring Kevin Costner.  In an interview, Costner
referred to the dialect as "Victorian language".  I
didn't know quite what he meant.

An example of the dialect follows:
"We got a warrant sworn for attempted murder for them
that tried to kill the boy who's laying over there at
the Doc's, trying to stay alive. Swore out another one
for them that murdered the big fella you had in your
cell. Only ours ain't writ by no tin star, bought and
paid for, Marshall. It's writ by us, and we aim to
enforce it."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm a little suspicious of the quote.  It is addressed to someone who has the
job title of "Marshall" [sic---should be only one "l"].  In the WIld West,
"marshal" was the title for two different law enforcement positions:
1) a municipal police officer (now archaic)
2) a US Marshal (a position that still exists today)
(If I remember correctly, the Earp brothers in the Tombstone days held down
both types of marshal positions)

Both types of marshals frequently wore metal badges.  Since the Civil War the
attributive noun "tin" has meant any type of thin sheet metal (e.g. lightly
armored Union gunboats in the Civil War  were known as "tinclads", or L. Frank
Baum's "Tin Woodsman" (Wizard of Oz, 1900) who, since he rusted, was obviously
made of sheet iron or sheet steel rather than tin.)  Hence it was not
uncommon for a marshal's badge, and by extension the marshal himself, to be called a
"tin star".

Therefore the speaker, by using the phrase "tin star", is gratuitously
insulting the (town or US) marshal he is addressing.

I seem to recall having heard "them that" for "those who" in jocular
expressions, the kind in which ungrammatical usages are used for emphasis, e.g. "The
Golden Rule: Them that has the gold, rules".

"laying" for "lying" is a common grammatical error, much commented on by my
grade school grammar books.  "Ain't" needs no commentary.  The only other
violations of formal grammar and diction are the missing "by" clause after "sworn",
the missing subject in the second sentence, the singular "It" as subject of
the last sentence, and the quaint-sounding use of "writ" as a verb.

There is a play on words that seems to have snuck by the scriptwriter.  A
warrant is a "writ", and hence the speaker and his colleagues have "writ a writ".

               - James A. Landau