Lord Randal

The ballad is mainly the recording of a dialogue. Its structure follows
the typical four line-stanza. Its questioning syntax reinforces
memory and therefore the ballad was very popular and it also was easy
to be handed down.
The protagonist of the text is an aristocratic young man as the
intelligent reader can see from the title. Popular test was
attractive by aristocratic families and situations. In addition, the
supernatural caught their attention. The setting of the ballad is the
typical one of the medieval taste: the greenwood.
The first quatrain introduces the situation; Lord Randal's mother asks
her son where he has been because he looks tired and he feels like
fainting.
The son answers that he has been at the wood. Repetition, high density of
men sound, refrain and punctuation create an atmosphere of suffering
and impending. Right from the start, the ballad displaces the
passionate relationship between mother and son during the Middle
Ages: the mother addresses Lord Randal as "my handsome young man"
making clear that he is attractive and young. Of course the mother's
sense of possessiveness is signed   by the repetitive use of the
possessive adjective "my". The sound "m" is recurrent: seven
times in the very first stanza. It is the typical sound of somebody
who is complaining.
In the second stanza almost the same from the phonological level Lord
Randal answers his mother's curiosity: she wants to know where he has
been and it appears clear that Lord Randal has probably been under a
spell, a negative one unfortunately.
The intelligent reader can't find clear close to decide if the semantic
choice "true-love" is a parody or the result of an illusion. It
appears that people from aristocracy mainly spent their time hunting
that is they were not complain to gain a living and were generally
brought up by people who were supposed to be at their service. The
reader understands this immediately by the use of the imperative,
nine times occurring in the ballad (make my bed soon). Men especially
if the first child detained power, property and money and as a result
woman's life in any family depended on the relationship they had with
the main people.

Besides the expression "make my bed soon" lets the intelligent reader
suppose there is something wrong with Lord Randal's mother, textually
probably because Lord Randal's "true-love" gave him something
dangerous (eels). The food sounds the typical one given by witches.
Witches may be masked under the veil of attractive beautiful women.
This explains for the typical mentality of the Middle Ages, according
to which women roles were clearly defined: they could be daughters,
wives, mothers or nuns. If they didn't conform to such standards,
they could be considered dangerous that is attractive, prostitutes or
witches. In short, Medieval society established a social divided
between women and men that still exists and explains for the dominant
main role that civil western society had.

In contemporary society the 70% of female violence is still played
inside the family and generally speaking acted by people from that
ages. This also explains why Lord Randal necessarily had to be the
victim of some supernatural power, symbolically transfigured under
the shape of a female witch. Witches played their spells on men in
the forest where they generally performed their pagan rites to which
common women and men where not invited and punished in case they
decided to attend.

Therefore "Lord Randal" is a very interesting text to really understand the
mentality of the Middle Ages. It provides the reader information
about life-style  in the social classes, the relationship between
women and men inside and outside the family, the position of the
oldest son, the role of witch craft, the economic destiny of a
family, he role of animals inside the family (with a distinction
between animals in aristocracy: Lord Randal died together with his
hawks and hounds while the common people used to bring up animals to
survive, to eat and to work).
The mother, in the sixth quatrain, is worried about her and her son's
future. They understand that he was poisoned by the true-love, she
who he met in the forest.
In last quatrains, the reader can understand that Lord Randal has no
father, so all the money and the power is in his hands. The mother
wants to know what he will do. It is similar than our testament. He
has all, but if he die, the family has to go away. He shares out his
material objects between the mother, the brother and the sister. The
family has to have all, even if without him. But he wants to give the
true-love the hell and the fire: she poisoned him and now she has to
be punished. But he cannot give her that. He wants to address to God:
he sets all the pains and Lord Randal wants the true-love's
suffering.