During the hanging ceremony,
a woman says to Mattie:
"The hangman's a Yankee.
They say he won't spring the trap
on a boy that wore the blue."
Does that mean,
that one had to put on blue clothes
in order to avoid being hanged ?
Ha! No, it looks unamgibuous to me because of the past-tense "wore" and the articled "the blue." It refers to a boy who in the late war was clad in the Union uniform.
shareSo you want to say
that the expression "won't" is to be understood
as "would not" instead of "will not",
which, however, is against the grammar ?
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Well, a hangman has to do his job
regardless of the delinquent's former uniform colour.
Had he ever refused to execute his duty,
he would immediately have been replaced by an other one.
So I think this rumour is just a fairy tale,
and the executioner will really hang criminals of every political colour.
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What a waste of money !
Whenever they had two delinquents with two different former uniform colours
to be hanged simultaneously,
they needed two executioners to spring the trap.
It would be much cheaper to have one hangman for all sorts of criminals -
- or did they really have too much money ?
I think the key to understanding this scene is the phrase, "They say". The woman is spreading a rumor she heard about the hangman. He was a Union veteran of the Civil War, and the story probably was spread that he wouldn't hang another Union veteran. This is such a minor point to nitpick.
"It ain't dying I'm talking about, it's LIVING!"
Captain Augustus McCrae
Well, presumably you are right.