LADY
DIAMOND

Lady Diamond is a ballad composed by thirteen quatrains. It talks about a princess who was pregnant and her lover was a kitchen boy.

In the first quatrain the main characters are introduced. They are a famous king and her daughter Lady Diamond. 
From the word "dear" ("and he had an only daughter dear") we can understand that the girl was very important to her father.
In the second quatrain Lady Diamond's lover in introduced, the kitchen boy. The ballad also tell us that their love had been started in Autumn ("till the grassovergrew the corn" = Autumn). In the third quatrain we can understand the Lady was pregnant and she was freighted because she was noble and her lover was only a kitchen boy. In the next three quatrains the narrator tell us how the king
reacted to the notice of the pregnancy: he was very angry and in the seventh, in the eighth and in the ninth we understand that the king's men had killed the kitchen boy. It was inadmissible a love story between a noble girl and a kitchen boy! In the last quatrains we feel the Lady's sadness and we understand that she died of hopelessness. The king didn't know why her daughter died only
for a kitchen boy.

THE HOUSE CARPENTER

"the carpenter house" is a ballad composed by fourteen quatrains. It is a speech between a woman and a man. From the title we can understand that the ballad will be about "normal" people and not
aristocratic people like in Lady Diamond's story.

The first and the second quatrains tell us hat the man character was rich because he travelled ("I've just returned from the salt, salt see) and because he could marry the King's daughter and that he
loved the other character ("all for the love of thee").  In the third quatrain the woman character
speak.
She refused the rich man's love because she was married to a carpenter. In the fourth and in the sixth quatrains the rich man's  asked the woman to sail with him but the woman, in the fifth quatrain, was very worried because she didn't know how the rich man could maintain her.  In the seventh quatrain we understand that the woman had decided to go with her rich man.  In the next four the ballad tell us that the woman was very unhappy and she cried for her little baby that she would never see.  In the last three quatrain it is explained a sea storm and we understand that the two "lovers" dye.. but they didn't go to Heaven but to Hell.