Task: “Lord Randal is on the poin of dying. He declares his will to his mother. After considering the denotative level of the poem, write an argumentative text about what you learn of the Middle Ages thanks to the poem.”

As Lord Randal comes home from the greenwood, his mother, being curious after noticing that the man was feeling sick and was ordering her to make his bed, starts to ask him lots of questions about where he has been and everything that has happened. Lord Randal, in a more distant way than his mother’s (which makes us understand the type of relationship between the two, which is close from his mother to him but not the other way around), replies that he has been in the forest and that he has met a woman with whom he fell in love with. This woman, who he will describe as his “true-love” (line 8), poisoned the Lord feeding him fried eels in a pan that killed his hawks and hounds. As he is feeling not only sick at the heart for the betrayal but also poisoned, his mother asks him what he will leave to her, his sister, his brother and his true-love once he will pass away.

Being the storyline set in the Middle Ages we can discover a lot of peculiarities about the life during that period of time.

Back in the day, Lords were still an important part of society, who possessed innumerable goods such as lands, metals and livestock which, at the time, were considered the most important matters to have.

The male figure used to be a very important one (which still is nowadays in some parts of the world): males were seen as strong people who had to haunt for survival and give orders (for example, Lord Randal not only comes back home tired from haunting, but he also orders his own mother to make his bed as soon as possible so that he can rest). They were seen as imponent figures of the society and that is the reason why everyone, especially female figures (such as Lord Randal’s mom), looked up very much to them.

We can also notice how it was common to gift food as a present: when Lord Randal falls in love with the woman, she tricks the Lord gifting him eels fried that were secretly poisoned. The man loved the present and even had leavings for his haunting allies (his hawks and hounds). This even explains how cruel people could have been in the past, hurting somebody with hidden strategies.

As somebody is on the point of dying, he/she declares inside of his/her will which good he/she will give to who: in this case, the most important matters to leave to his/her closest people are his/her livestock, metals, lands and houses. This was even more importanti f you were the first born baby in the family.

Last but not least, it was common to damn anybody who has hurt you or to bless anybody who has done something good to you or to someone else.