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

"He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around ." Mark Twain. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Kindle Locations 305-306).

Comparing dictionary entries, I find that raising welts (or is it weals?) as with a whip may be correctly described as to whale, to wale, to weal, but not to wail.

However, as I grew up, I always heard it as wale on someone rather than to wale them.  Admittedly, I mostly heard that verb used by kids whose families, like Huck's Pap, valued violence in proper child-rearing but were indifferent to education.  They also seemed to consider it a waling the same as a whooping; that is, pain was involved but not necessarily welts, as Stedman's Medical Dictionary requires.  The word(s) appear to have come from the Old English walu, meaning ridge.

Is this a localism, or is it widely held that the victim is waled on, whether or not there are raised welts?