MB UNIUD

The poem is a folk ballad. Right from the title the reader understands Randal is the main character and belongs to aristocracy there for the intelligent reader aspects something typical of the life of rich people, probably some rituals of the aristocratic class.

The ballad consists of ten four lines stanzas arranged in a form of dialogue between Lord Randal and his mother. According to the typical conventions of a ballad it starts with the climatic episode of the story: Lord Randal has been poisoned while hunting and has just came back home.

The whole ballad follow a fixed structure: the first two lines are Randal's mother questions, while the third and the fourth lines are Randal's answers.

The poem starts with Lord Randal's mother voice: she is worried and wants to know were her son has been.

In the first two lines the intelligent reader can immediately understand the relationship of affection of the mother towards her son.

The composer uses the repetition of the possessive adjective "my" before "son" and "man".

In addition the adjectives "handsome" and "young" both underline the idea the mother had of her son.

Immediately after the reader understands that the son has a patronizing attitude towards his mother, he gives orders and aspects his mother to obey.

The first stanza already exhibits the typical features of a ballad, arranged into quatrains, using a lot of repetitions and incremental repetitions, very simple language, which at the same time can return to the reader the idea of the context.

Alliteration of sound "M" recreates he feeling of suffering of the mother and the alliteration of sound "W" at line four also focuses the reader's attention on the physical  weariness of Lord Randal.

The author is not clear about the age of the son.

The poem goes on with Randal's mother asking him who he met while hunting. He replies that he met his true-love. Here again there are repetitions and alliterations as in the first stanza. The two relevant things are firstly the word "wha" which indicates "who", secondly the change in the use of "ye" and "you".

The third stanza follows again the same structure of the first two stanzas and tells about what Randal's true-love gave him. He received  fried eels which were poisoned but Randal was totally unaware.

The next stanza speaks about who ate the remaining food and the third line gives the answer: Randal's hawks and dogs. The word "hounds" is old and no longer used.

The ballad goes on telling about the destiny of the animals: the mother asks what became of them, and the son answers that they have died.

Maybe the animals stretched their legs and died because the effect of the poison was immediate. However, this is in contrast with the gradual effect of the substance on Lord Randal because he says that he feels tired and fainting.

The poem goes on with Randal that has been poisoned. The use of the verb "fear" indicates that the mother was right: in fact in the first stanza has already introduced us Randal's mother worries.

The last four stanzas are about what Randal leaves to his family (mother, sister and brother) and his true love. There is a fundamental difference because the family gets things, while his girlfriend is destined to hell.