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A fairy tale begins:

Once upon a time the men of Gotham would have kept the Cuckoo so that she might sing all the year, and in the midst of their town they made a hedge round in compass and they got a Cuckoo, and put her into it, and said, 'Sing there all through the year, or thou shalt have neither meat nor water.' The Cuckoo, as soon as she perceived herself within the hedge, flew away. 'A vengeance on her!' said they. 'We did not make our hedge high enough.'

What does "would have kept" mean in this context? How do you paraphraise it? Is it something like "they were likely to have kept"?

RegDwigнt
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user54503
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    This is the now mostly obsolete volitive sense of will, meaning approximately wish, desire, want. The apparent perfect uses HAVE + pa.ppl. as the past expression of present-referent would. So the construction can be paraphrased The men of Gotham wanted to keep the Cuckoo - keep, again, in a mostly obsolete sense of maintain possession of, as in eat your cake and keep it, too. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 19 '13 at 19:37
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    In the sense of keep a pet or keep a cow, which is not that obsolete. On the other hand, it is rare to find the deontic sense of will outside a conditional clause any more, let alone to find a use of the preterite would as a real preterite. That certainly qualifies as obsolete. – John Lawler Oct 19 '13 at 20:02
  • @StoneyB, I never knew will with volitive sense could be used with perfect form, though in that context the meaning of desire suggested itself. Yet, I have one more. How shall I parafraise this sentence? At one time there would have been flowers on the table, a clean cloth, small spoons standing ready in the cut-glass serving dishes of condiments she had spiced ... – user54503 Oct 19 '13 at 20:19
  • @john Lawler But if I say 'When I was a child I would have gone to bed earlier than that'; that seems a perfectly usual expression. I am not aware of these linguistic terms, 'deontic' and 'preterite', but the sentence above seems to be using 'would' in the same way I have just done. – WS2 Oct 19 '13 at 20:29
  • yet another rare would: "So he told his mother that the time was now come for him to go away upon his travels also. At first she refused to let him go; but at last she requested him to take the can to the well for water, that she might make a cake for him. So he went, but as he was bringing home the water, a raven over his head cried to him to look, and he would see that the water was running out." WHY IS THAT WOULD THERE? just an emphsis? – user54503 Oct 19 '13 at 20:33
  • @JohnLawler I'd call keep a pet/cow/house a different sense: maintain rather than hold on to. But you're still right, it's not entirely obsolete. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 19 '13 at 20:35
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    ...he has suggested that the Thames would have frozen more readily in the seventeenth century than now. I think OP's would have = was/were likely* to have* is a perfectly good substitution, and I see no real reason to explicitly introduce the concept of "volition" here. Any more than I read likely as carrying overtones of like=prefer. – FumbleFingers Oct 19 '13 at 20:39
  • @FumbleFingers does it mean my guess "they were likely to have kept" was right? ) – user54503 Oct 19 '13 at 20:44
  • @user54503: I would say so, yes. Another paraphrasing, perhaps more suitable in slightly different contexts, is would=was in the habit of. Thus, "On Christmas Eve we would put a mince pie and a glass of sherry by the fire for Santa". We did it because we were in the habit of doing so, rather than because we wanted to. – FumbleFingers Oct 19 '13 at 20:57
  • @FumbleFingers Foreshift it to present tense: "The men of Gotham would keep the cuckoo, and they're building a hedge and putting a cuckoo in it." I don't see how you can escape a volitive (or as John Lawler says, a deontic) sense. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 19 '13 at 21:00
  • @StoneyB: But the given context starts with Once upon a time, so it's not obvious to me this one directly relates to the volitional context. Which I wouldn't really say is exactly "obsolete" anyway - it seems to me "I told him not to do it, but he wouldn't listen" is a perfectly normal instance of the volitional. Which can be shifted to "present" tense "I'm trying to stop him, but he won't* listen"*, and still remain perfectly "current". – FumbleFingers Oct 19 '13 at 21:08
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    @FumbleFingers Yes, I expressed myself badly. Volitive will is 'mostly' obsolete as an ordinary declarative, which is how I believe it is used here. It's still active in conditionals, negations, occasional emphatics - You will* keep arguing with me! :)* But nobody today would [epistemic] say, as Hamlet does, "I would I had been there" or "I would you were so honest a man". We would say "I wish". – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 19 '13 at 21:22
  • @StoneyB: Thanks for giving me my "smile of the day" with that "emphatic" example! But if I write "I will have the last word" (putting aside the possibility you might thwart me by responding! :) it's something of a moot point whether that's a simple prediction using "future" tense, or a declaration of my "present tense" will/intention. On reflection though, and noting other hopelessly archaic usages in OP's source, I concede that would have kept=wished to keep here, not were accustomed to keep – FumbleFingers Oct 19 '13 at 22:04
  • @user54503: your question about the raven seems to have been swallowed in the discussion. That has nothing to do with the main question; it is merely the past of "Look, and you will see". As such, it is still in use: "The bank said that if I kept spending at that rate, I would be bankrupt in six months. Fortunately, I won enough on the horses to keep me going." – Tim Lymington Oct 20 '13 at 12:50
  • @TimLymington: thank you, Tim. You leterally opened my eyes on that. I thought that the raven cried to him to look and (after that) he (looked and) saw, that's why the "would" in between there baffled me a bit, but now i got it. I think it was comma in that sentence that caused me the trouble. – user54503 Oct 20 '13 at 18:30

1 Answers1

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The discussion in comments to the question (including some from myself which I no longer endorse) probably covers everything. But I guess we need an actual answer, so...

As @StoneyB comments, this is an example of the now mostly obsolete volitive sense of will, meaning approximately wish, desire, want.

On my first casual reading, I carelessly interpreted would have kept as meaning were likely to keep / were in the habit of keeping (in my defence, because that's still a common usage today).

But in fact a more reasonable paraphrase here is would have kept = wanted to keep. As @John Lawler comments, and discusses more extensively here, it's effectively an obsolete usage today.

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FumbleFingers
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  • well, thank you all guys. it was really helpful even though i still have no clear understanding. i might as well ignore this case having dubbed it absolutely out of date and of no real use nowadays. yet, i was just wondering why when shifting this would (I would you were so honest a man) in to past tense it should take up perfect form as in "would have kept". still, there have been many vague and interesting cases of would in my reading experience. later i'll try to find them and bring out to discuss. – user54503 Oct 20 '13 at 06:36
  • The volitional/deontic sense of ‘will’ is, as both you and John say, effectively obsolete in the spoken language except in certain, limited situations. It is still usable in somewhat archaising literature, though: if you read George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (now popularised as the TV series Game of Thrones), for example, you will see it used very frequently in this sense. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 20 '13 at 13:47
  • @user54503: I think If you would keep it any time, dry it very well with clean cloths (late 1700s) is effectively the same usage. Today it's really just a stylistic choice whether to use if you want to* keep it* or *wanted to* in that context, and quite possibly something similar applies to your example (i.e. - maybe "...the men of Gotham would keep* the Cuckoo..."* would have been considered semantically equivalent). But I don't really know. – FumbleFingers Oct 20 '13 at 16:13