LORD RANDAL: CORRECT ANALYSIS
The ballad is mainly the recording of a dialog. 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 taste was attracted by aristocratic families and situations. In addition the supernatural caught their attention. The setting of the ballad was the typical one of 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 "m" sound, refrain and pronunciation altogether create an atmosphere of suffering and impending death.
Right from the start, the ballad displays the passionate relationship between mother and son during the Middle Ages. The mother addresses Randal as "my handsome young man", making clear he is attractive and young. Of course, the mother's sense of possessiveness is signaled by the repetitive use of the possessive adjective "my". The sound "m" is recurrent: seven times in the very first stanza. It's the typical sound of who is complaining.
In the second stanza, almost the scene 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 clues 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 compelled 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 the first child, detained power, property and money and as a result women's life in any family depended on the relationship they had with the male people. Besides, the expression "make my bed soon" lets the intelligent reader suppose there is something wrong with Lord Randal's health. Textually probably because lord Randal's true love gave him something dangerous (eels fried in a pan). 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's role 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 and explains for the dominant male roles that civil western society still holds. In contemporary society the 70% of female violence is still played inside the family and generally speaking acted by people from male gender. 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 were 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: lifestyle in the social classes, the relationship between men and women, inside and outside the family, the position of the oldest son, the role of witchcraft, the economic destiny of a family, the 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).

In the sixth stanza the mother deduces her son has been poisoned by the witch. There are some clues: Lord Randal is weak and tired, he seems under a spell, he has eaten the typical food of witches and all his animals have already died. The son answers affirmatively, and from this stanza the final refrain is slightly modified. The alliteration of the sound "m" recurs again.
In the four final stanzas the mother asks her son how he will distribute his heritance. He says he will leave 24 milk cows to his mother, his gold and silver to his sister, his estate properties to his brother and concludes he leaves hell and fire to his true love. Notably, the expression "I leave" is repeated in the 39th line and highlights his revenge against his murderer.
The ballad is rich of dialectal words and expressions (kye, wearied, etc.), which confirms its Scottish origin. Besides, it is written in popular language, with short forms and common phrases, according to the classical pattern of the ballad. Also its rhyme scheme conforms to it, following the order ABCC. All the rhymes are made up of the same words (son-man-soon-doon), which create the impression that the ballad is a spell itself.

MEDIEVAL CULTURE
Medieval culture has got some peculiar traits. The most important cultural code of the period was religion. All the actions people did aimed at obtaining salvation for the afterlife. Earthly life was not considered important. Women were believed to be inferior to men and they were supposed only to be wives, mothers or nuns. Religious themes and references were omnipresent in all arts, from painting to literature. In particular, art should be shaped in order to teach the religious principles to the less cultured people.
The most widespread literary form was the popular anonymous ballad. However, poems were also common; Geoffrey Chaucer is the most famous poet of the period.
Overall, literature was mainly oral and was handed over from generation to generation. To ease memorization, people used sound devices very frequently, like repetition, incremental repetition, refrain, alliterative lines, assonance, consonance, rhyme and rhythm. The commonest stanza was the quatrain with alternate rhyme.
People were mainly illiterate and therefore the most frequent topics were religious or popular. For instance, ballads dealt with tragic love stories, supernatural events or the battles between Scotland and England.