Lord Randal

Lord Randal is a ballad. Right from the title the reader understands the text may be about a man belonging to aristocracy, whose name is Lord Randal.

The ballad is made up of 10 four-line stanzas. All the quatrains end with the same words, so there is always a rhyme between the third and fourth line (“soon”-“doon”). They anticipate and underline the real end of the story, where the protagonist is going to die (lie down) soon.
The ballad consists of the exchange of dialogue between the two main characters: Lord Randal and his mother. This way the narration is more personal, the reader faces with the characters’ true words and can easier understand their feelings.
The first two lines of each quatrain report the mother’s questions and the other two contain the son’s answers. The lines of the ballad are very long and this is probably one of the reasons why their structure is so repetitive.

• The first and second lines of each stanza are composed by a question and the addressing  “Lord Randal, my son” and “my handsome young man”.
• The third line always ends with the words “mother, mak my bed soon”.
• The fourth line says “For I’m wearied wi’ hunting, and fain wad lie doon” in the first five quatrains and “For I’m sick at the heart, and fain wad lie doon” in the last five ones.

The first stanza gives the setting to the whole ballad: the mother asks her son where he has been and he answers he has been at the greenwood for hunting. The “greenwood” was a sacred wood ruled by the Queen of fairies and hunting was forbidden without her permission. Then, the young man asks his mother to make his bed soon because he is very tired and wants to have a rest.

But his mother goes on with her questions underlined by the incremental repetition that seems to convey her worry. She asks him who he has met and he answers he has met his true love. But then he goes on repeating the same words as before, making the reader feel the increasing of his tiredness. However the story goes on and the mother asks him what she has given him. He answers she has given him eels fried in a pan and when his mother asks him who got the leavings he answers his hawks and hounds did. At least, the mother asks where they are and the son answers the have died on the way home.

The sixth quatrain breaks the atmosphere of the ballad with Lord Randal’s mother’s exclamation: “Oh I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son”. Lord Randal’s answer is even simpler and more shocking: “Oh yes I am poisoned, mother”. After this revelation, the request “mak my bed soon” is seen from a different perspective: Lord Randal’s tiredness is given by his approaching death and the bed he’s asking for is going to become his grave. Even the last line of the quatrain interrupts his repetition: Lord Randal stops lying saying he is tired with hunting and says the truth to his mother, telling her he is “sick at the heart”. At last, the one who he has met in the wood was probably a fairy who had poisoned him because he was hunting in the sacred wood.

In the last four stanzas the questions of the mother have a different sound: she is no more worried about his son who looked so strange and tired, because she now knows he is going to die soon. She is worried about her and her daughter’s future: they are women and women didn’t have any importance in the Middle Ages once they had not a man next to them. She wants to make her sure they will be able to survive. The son answers he will leave 24 milk cows to his mother and his gold and silver to his sister, that is enough to survive and buy food.
After that, the mother asks about what he is going to leave to his brother and he tells her he will leave him his house and his land, that is all his feudal power and a place to live.
At last, she asks him what he is going to leave to his true love, who has met that day. And Lord Randal answers with anger he will leave her hell and fire.