Lord Randal

Right from the title the reader can know an important character of the ballad: Lord Randal. The title "Lord" lets the reader know Randal is an aristocratic.

The ballad is made up of ten quatrains. The lines are generally long, the last two lines of each stanza have at least two verbs for each line. The story is told only through dialog: the first two lines of each stanza are questions while the other ones are answers.  The ballad is a supernatural ballad and the language is informal with influences of Scottish dialects.

In the ballad the most used device of sound is incremental repetition: each stanza is very similar to the other ones, there is the same phrase construction and almost all the words are the ones used in the previous stanzas. The ballad is made up of the questions of the mother of Lord Randal and his answers.  The entire ballad has the same rhyming couplets. The impressive use of incremental repetition is due to the purpose of Medieval ballads: they had to help memorization since they were an oral kind of poetry. In every stanza there is a different question. The last line of each stanza changes by the sixth stanza but it remains very similar to the previous ones. In the third line of each stanza the alliteration between the words "mak" and "my" gives the reader the idea of the peremptory of Lord Randal's order while in the third line of the last stanza ("her hell") shows the hate for her love. The adjective "true" referred to "love" is used ironically in the last stanza in contrast with the one in the second stanza. While the former makes the reader think his love is really true the latter makes the reader feel the hate and the betrayal.

The ballad takes place in an aristocratic family as the reader can understand from the title "Lord" and the inheritances in stanza seven, eight and nine. Lord Randal came back home from the forest but the reader can understand his mother immediately realized there was something wrong with him, as it will be discovered later. Lord Randal was poisoned by his lover in the forest probably because she wanted his money and this is way three stanzas (7, 8 and 9) are dedicated  to his inheritance.