dialectal "from the home" /of the home

[Wilson Gray]

On Nov 23, 2004, at 10:10 AM, James A. Landau wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: dialectal "from the home" /of the home
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> Wilson Gray writes:
>
>> BTW, the funeral cortege of any dead Texan,
>>  irrespective of race, creed, color, or sexual orientation, is
>> escorted
>>  to his/her final resting place by the Texas State Police (not to be
>>  confused with the Texas Rangers).
>
>> I'm not even sure that Marshall had any regular peace officers
>
> The town of Marshall had no town marshal?

Not that I know of.
>
> It is said that the reason the US Army does not have the rank of
> "Marshal" or
> "Field Marshal" is that the first man to be considered for such a rank
> was
> General (i.e. then four stars) George C. Marshall, and he refused to
> become
> "Marshal Marshall".
>
> It is certainly possible that George C. Marshall made such a statement.
> However, the first man to be considered for a rank equivalent to Field
> Marshal was
> Pershing, in the first World War.  Pershing, for some reason unknown
> to me,
> instead became "General of the Armies" rather than "Field Marshal."
>
> A Texas Ranger cannot be described as a "peace officer" because the
> Rangers
> are theoretically not a police force but rather the private army of
> the State
> of Texas.

The Rangers aren't quite an army. There aren't enough of them, though
I'm sure that, if you asked, you would be told that an army is
unnecessary, given the existence of the Rangers.

-Wilson Gray


>
> Beverly Flanigan writes:
>
>> I'd add that city or county
>> police (or sheriffs) always escort funeral processions "up home" in
>> Minnesota, and I presume everywhere else.  A procession might travel
>> 50
>> miles or more in a rural area, and police must clear the way and
>> maintain
>> reasonable speed.
>
> Wilson Gray writes:
>
>> At my grandfather's
>> funeral, the presence of the state-police escort was not considered to
>> be worthy of comment. In 1956, the presence of the Texas State Police
>> at a large gathering of black people would more likely have caused
>> panic, let alone comment, unless it was an ordinary occurrence,
>> expected under the circumstances. And an escort by the state police
>> was
>> not a service that the state of Texas would have provided to black
>> people and denied to white people.
>
> John Baker writes:
>
>> The people in this rural area continue the custom of stopping on the
> highway and
>> waiting for the funeral procession to pass.
>
> More than a custom; it is part of good driving practice and may be
> state law
> in most states.  At least it may be state law that once a convoy (any
> convoy
> on the road, not only a funeral procession) passes a traffic light and
> the
> light turns red, the convoy keeps going.  The custom of having the
> headlights on
> in a funeral procession has nothing to do with respect for the
> deceased.  It is
> a warning to other motorists that this is a convoy.  In fact, convoys
> other
> than funeral processions (which generally means military convoys) also
> have
> headlights on.
>
> As for the police escort, that is because a funeral procession,
> regardless of
> race creed or hairstyle, is an equal-opportunity creator of traffic
> problems.
>  It is not a "service provided to white people" but rather a necessity
> for
> the police department, one of whose duties is to clear up trafic
> problems.
>
> Wilson Gray writes:
>
>> when my father first went up to
>> Madison from his home hamlet of Moundville, Alabama, to get what was
>> then an LlB [sic] but is now a JD, the locals had problems with his
>> Alabama-backwater version of BE. As he put it, "When I first went up
>> yonder to go to school, folk in Wisconsin couldn't understand my
>> Alabama brogue." The OED has "brogue, n. A strongly-marked dialectal
>> pronunciation or accent."  Webster's New World has "the pronunciation
>> peculiar to a dialect."
>
> I was under the impression that "brogue" referred specifically to an
> Irish
> accent.
>