MB UNIUD

Es. n. 2 pag. 85

In the present essay I want to compare two ballads: Lord Randal and The Wife of Usher's Well.

Reading the two ballads we can find some similarities and differences.

In the first part I want to diel of the content.

Lord Randal is a ballad in which the protagonist belongs to aristocracy. It tells about the attitudes and the behaviours of people who occupate high positions in the society.

On the contrary The Wife of Usher's Well is a story in which the characters do not belong to aristocracy. The main character, the wife, is wealthy but she is not a noble.

In the two ballads there are different characters. In the first there are only two: Lord Randal and his mother. In the second there are 4 characters: the wife and her three sons.

Now I want to analyse the sound aspects.

Both of the ballads present the typical features of a traditional one. The ballad is an oral form of poetry and, therefore, the most important aspect is the sound. In the two compositions we can find these features. As the matter of fact there are frequent alliterations, repetitions, incremental repetitions and refrains. This is very important because they help to memorize all the tests.

In Lord Randal the reader can immediately see the repetitions: as the matter of fact the composer repeats the same first two lines in each quatrain.

But also in The Wife of Usher's Well we can find repetitions: for example the repetition of some words (wife, week, well, red, crew) which capture the attention of the reader.

In the third part I want to talk about the language.

Both of the two ballads have a simple language.

In Lord Randal the composer uses very simple words, so the reader can immediately understand the events of the story.

Also in The Wife of Usher's Well the composer uses simple words but we have to underline a very important difference. Although in the ballad there are not very difficult words, the composer uses some metaphors. So the reader have to understand the real meaning of each line.

A similarity between the two ballads about the language is that both of them have words of Saxon origin.

Now I want to discuss the themes.

The two ballads are similar because they tell a tragic event, so both of them are dramatic tests. But there are differences about themes in the two compositions.

As the matter of fact the themes of Lord Randal are: the death of a son and the attitudes of an aristocratic family.

On the contrary the themes of The Wife of Usher's Well are different and they are: the tragic death of three sons, the supernatural, the relationship between a mother and her sons, the suffering of the mother and the medieval culture.

To conclude I can say that the two ballads are similar especially for the sound aspects and the simple language used by the composers, but they have got also some differences. First of all the content of the two compositions is not the same. Secondly the themes are also different.