Siouanists, eat your heart out.

[Alan H. Hartley]

Bob Rankin wrote:

> How many generations has it been since
> 'would' was truly the past tense of 'will' and was required by the
> sequence-of-tenses rules in English sentences like the one below?

These are the latest examples in the OED, Tennyson's being archaizing:

1643 [Angier] Lanc. Vall. Achor 18 When we would no Pardon they laboured
to punish us.

1682 Bunyan Holy War (1905) 263 He would that Captain Credence should
join himself with them.

1692 Washington tr. Milton's Def. People xii. 238 To perform, not what
he himself would, but what the People..requir'd of him.

1868 Tennyson Lucretius 68 Because I would not one of thine own doves,
Not ev'n a rose, were offer'd to thee.

The usage is, of course, recorded from Old English (c. A.D. 900) on.

Apologies for extending this non-Siouan excursus.

Alan