EXERCICES 14/03/2012N

D

LADY DIAMOND

This is a Scottish popular ballad. It is set in medieval period at the court of a rich and famous king.

He has only one beautiful daughter and he loves her, he calls her "Lady Diamond". A kitchen boy lives at the castle too, and on a summer the girl falls in love with him.

Five months later the girl starts to cry because she find out she is pregnant and her clothes don't fasten anymore.

On a winter night her father enters her room and asks her why she is so pale and the dresses are too short. So she confesses her love for the kitchen boy and the king decides to kill him. His men cut his heart from him, put it in a gold bowl and give it to the poor girl. She is full of despair, she cries her heart out and then she dies.

After her death the king understands he has made a big mistake and he cries too because he has lost his beautiful diamond.

QUESTIONS PAGE 4:

• Music is very important nowadays too. It is a different kind of music but it is wide-spread and common among people as in the Middle Ages.  
• Yes, I have. It is sung and accompanied by musical instruments and it has both religious and popular content.

QUESTIONS PAGE 7:

• It is structured in thirteen stanzas. Each of them has got four lines and is called quatrain.
• No, it hasn't. The second and the fourth line of many stanzas form a rime but it does not happen in all of them.
• It is told both through dialogue and narration. In the first part the predominant form is narration but after the fourth stanza there is a large use of dialogue. 
• The stile is simple and the language concrete.  
• In both texts there are no references about time and place and the real names of characters are not said. They are only described with their qualities.
• Stanza two refers to summer because in that period of the year grass overgrows the corn.
• I refers to winter because it says "on a winter's night".
• They are both white. The girl's hand because she is noble so she as a fair skin but also because she is troubled. The boy's breast is white because he is dead.
• She begs him not to punish her but to approve her love. She has an imploring attitude.
• I think he is on Diamond's side.

QUESTIONS PAGE 11: 

• The two characters are the carpenter's wife and her lover.
• He has given up to marry the king's daughter. He has given up her crown and her money.
• He wants her to flee away with him, giving up her husband.
• She wants to know if her lover can maintain her.
• She misses her child.
• The ship sinks and they die.
• Heaven is described as a place with fair and high hills. Hell is described has a place with low and dark hills.
• It is forbidden because they are sinners.