p. 7

1.    The ballad is made up of 13 quatrains.

2.    Yes, it has an alternate rhyme scheme.

3.    The story is told with both dialog and narration. There is a long descriptive passage in the first four stanzas.

4.    The language is concrete and the style is simple.

5.    The beginning remind me of a fable. In the ballad the story starts in medias res.

6.    The season referred to in stanza two is summer because in summer the corn is cut and so it is smaller than the grass.

7.    The season in stanza four is referred to winter because there is the word "winter" and stanza two tells the reader the story is set twenty weeks later.

8.    Diamond's hand is white as the breast of the kitchen boy.

9.    Lady Diamond is kind with her father since she is worried about her lover.

10. I think the singer is on the Diamond's side since he forgives Lady Diamond's behaviour and punishes the king's reaction.  

LADY DIAMOND

Denotative analysis

The ballad is made up of 13 four-line stanzas. The ballad uses sound devices such as rhyme and incremental repetition. It has an alternate rhyme scheme. The language is very concrete and matter-of-fact, there is a big influence from Scottish dialect and often an iconic use of language. There are only a few references to space and time and the story is told with both dialog and narration.

The story starts in medias res describing a love story. There is a king and a princess fell in love with her kitchen boy. Just from the title it appears the possessiveness of the king which considers her daughter as a diamond. The princess was pregnant and after the king had discovered it he decided to kill the kitchen boy secretly then he put the boy's hearth in a bowl and gave it to the princess. The princess was very sad and she could not bear her pain, so she died. After the king had seen her dead daughter he regretted and accused their servants for they did not stop him.