Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I was going to just say "I agree with Rafee" and leave it at that.   But I couldn't quite leave it alone; I kept running over, in my mind, different ways to say the same thing:   "Should it run…", "if it run…" (that would be subjunctive), "if it shall run…" and so forth.   And finally I had A New Thought:   I'll bet that in the sentence "if it should run", "should" is the subjunctive form of "shall".

It occurred to me only this minute, so I haven't had time to examine it and see whether it's wrong.   What do some of the rest of you think?   It fits the usage:   "If it shall run" is indicative, and after "if" the older Anglophones would want the subjunctive instead (though we don't use the subjunctive with "if" much any more).

And should we fail, your smiles will break our fall
In contexts like this old verse, 'should' might well have no connections to 'shall' at all, because for all intents and purposes it is the exact equivalence of 'if.' And this usage is always common in both old and modern English.