BONNIE GEORGE CAMPBELL

"Bonnie George Campbell" is a ballad.
Righrt fromthe title the reader understands the text may be about a handsome atractive man, as suggested by the adjective "bonnie".

The structure is the tipical four-line stanza as it always happens in the ballads that are the expression of popular task and culture. It mixes dialogue and narration and therefore it is the reader's task to find out the different functions of dialogue and narration. Going through the text you can immediately understand that while the narrator creates the setting where the charachters' life and adventures take place, dialogue takes a more dramatic roule. It is a structural means and way to convey to the reader the emotional aspect of the story.

The 1^st stanza sets the atmosphere of the whole ballad resorting to repetition of sound and semantic choices. The preposition "upon" immediately makes the reader understand the situation takes place in a hilly area: <High upon the Hishlands>; therefore the action is set in Scotland, near the Tay. Geographical references add concretness and reality to the story told by the narrator who immediately introduces the protagonist: Bonnie George Campbell. It lets understand the reader that he can ride and that he went out one day on horse.

The 2^nd stanza recreates on the level of rythm the action of riding. The narrator uses an anaphoric syntax in the first line; he uses subject and verb, subject and verb again, and decided to reinforce the idea of riding with the allitterative use of sound ("sadded", "bridled"). The sound "d" repeated 3 times recreates the tipical jumping effect of they who go on horse. The second line of the second stanza shows George's attitude first ("gallad") and in addiction uses invertion as the reader can see in the construction "rade he" where the subject is placed at the end of the line: that is in key-position in order to draw the reader's attention on the main charchter who is the pilot of the all ballad.
Besides the key-position of "he" at line 6 creates the rhyme with line 8 so that again "he" remains at the centre of interest. The most important word choice in line 8 is indeed the time reference "never" and therefore it is in key-position because all the remaining part of the ballad will depend on George Campbell's disappearence. "Never" is an absolute reality, it allowds no changing what's ever in his destiny.

The narrator is interested in expressing Bonnie's mother and Bonnie's bride reaction. Again the narrator uses inversion of word order to put the forefront the roule of the two women that are also the most important women of his life.

The real mex of the ballad is indeed convey by dialogue, where it is the speaking voice to underline the terrible destiny of Bonnie George Campbell.
The stanza – the dialogue – recalls almost in an echo effect the sorrow left behind by someone's death. Nature (meadow – corn) as here the roule of symbolically rappresenting of human feelings become the metaphorical rappresentation of human suffering. The following stanzas complitelly recal to the memory and to the reader's memory the tragic Bonnie's adventure that turned out into a tragedy.

The choice a "sword at his knee" seem to create a visual picture of a young man on a horse.
The tragedy is hinted at by the adjective "bloody" immediately followed by the verb "to be", a perception verb that is one that does not depend on peoples' willingness. The ballad symbolically ends with the most significant word, the ones on which repetitions and incremental repetitions was based.