MB UNIUD

I am going to compare and contrast Lord Randal and The Wife Of Usher's Well: they both are Medieval ballads, but they are deeply different from many points of view such as their contents, phonetic aspects and the language they use.

Firstly, I'm going to deal with the content of the ballads.

Lord Randal speaks about  a son and his mother and it tells the story of Lord Randal's poisoning and subsequent death.

The second ballad, The Wife Of Usher's Well speaks about the death of three sons whose mother sent them over the sea but unfortunately they died after a week. Moreover the second part of the ballad shows the desperation and the nightmares of the mother.

In brief both ballads show the relationship between mother and sons.

As far as phonetic aspect is concerned, the first ballad makes a frequent use of rhymes and alliterations and many sounds are repeated to create a strong rhythm (son, soon, ..).

In the second ballad the rhymes are not as widespread as in Lord Randal.

As for the language, Lord Randal is very very easy to read and understand because the words it uses are more or less modern and create an emotional impact on the intelligent reader.

Unfortunately, the language use in The Wife Of Usher's Well, is not clear since the word used belong to many years ago and do not belong to contemporary language. The language has a complicated structure if compared to Lord Randal.

In conclusion, the two ballads are similar in they contents and structure but they are different as for words and general language they used, notwithstanding the fact that they belong to the same period, namely he Middle Ages.