Textuality » 3A Interacting
The poem is a folk ballad, reading from the title the reader understand Randal is the main Character and belongs to Aristocracy therefore the reader expects something typical of the life of rich people, probably some rituals of the aristocratic class.
The ballad is arrange into ten for line stanzas and rhyme scheme is abad . the syntax; the mother uses interrogative form, Lord Randal uses affirmative form. The story is told through dialogue between lord randal and her mother. It is a narrative poem and according to the typical conventions of a ballad it starts with the climatic episode : Lord Randal has been poisoned while hunting and he's just come back home. The poem starts with lord ranal's mother's voice: she's worned and wants to know where son has been.there are two attituded: a patronazing son and an affectionate mother. the son uses the imperative that there is the language to give orders. She calls his son handsome and used the possessive my.
This ballad talks about a young man, called Lord Randal. In this ballad the mother wants to know what his handsome young man did in the greenwood. His mother asks him many questions.in every stanzas there are two qustions expect in the six stanza.the mother puts all the questions to her son to know what her son does.through this we understand the mother is caring and she seems like worry for her son. She asks him who he met and wha his girlfriend gave him to eat. true - love". It can be interpreted in two ways: the first is a rhetoric use of the language, because his lover had killed him; the second reason why the poet uses this word is because he wants to underline the stupidity of Lord Randal: he doesn't understand that his lover had killed him.
so his mother asks him who he will leave to her,his sister and his brother. The mother is worried about the future death of the son for two orders of reasons:1) she expresses the typical affection of the relationship mother - son2) she is worried about the future of the family because Randal was the first son.
The sound aspect is very important :The use of repetition is frequent and there are more alliteration for example: " mother make my, wearied wi', her hell." The function of this is to create a refrain that could help memorize the text. Alliteration af the sound m recreated the fellin gof suffery of the mother and the alliteration of sound
w at line 4 focues the reader attention on the physical weariness of l.r.
His true-love had given him "eels fried in a pan", his hawks and his hounds have taken the leavins and they are died.
The mother is worried because she thinks he had been poisoned and she wants to know what he will leave to her, to his sister, to his brother and to his true-love.