ANALYSIS - Lord Randal

The following text wants to analyse and discuss the Lord’s Randal ballad.

Starting from the title, the intelligent reader may conjecture something about the character who is nominated in the title: the protagonist. All he or she can guess is the social status of the subject, indeed he is a lord so he keeps a quite high position. The title doesn’t reveal much.

It’s now worthy describing the layout. The Lord Randal’s ballad is made up by 10 quatrains, each one is divided in two pieces. The poem is a dialogue between Lord Randal and his mother; therefore, the first part of the quatrain is the mother’s question and consequently the other two lines concern the son’s answer.

Suddenly after having read the text, the reader notices the amount of repetitions and rhymes the text presents. This is a consequence to the type of poem. Indeed, it is a ballad, a popular song which needed to be easy to memorize and rhythmic. Thus, entire lines repeat themselves during the whole ballad.

The intelligent reader may also recognize a simple use of language in the ballad, this is an added consequence of ballad genre. Indeed, they were popular songs and the language had to be simple.

The story of Lord Randal’s ballad starts describing the Lord returning home. She says he comes from hunting, even if this information will revel to be false, the reader understands Lord Randal used to go hunting. In fact, hunting was an activity reserved to nobility due to his costs. Therefore, the idea of high social class suggested in the title is confirmed. The conjecture of hunting as a usual sport acquires truth in the second stanza, where the mother notices a difference from the wont return.

The plot focuses on the last part of Randal’s life where he spells his testament. Lord Randal has been poisoned by his true-love, however his mother worries about the possessions she would inherit.

The first aspect worth to analyse is the meeting with the true-love. The true-love inhabits a forest and she is probably a shape of the medieval conception of woods. Hence, during Middle Ages, forests had become unfriendly places thanks to the growing of trees and saplings but also due to the develop of brigands’ communities. So, forests were imagined as witches and fantastic creatures’ homes.

The second relevant aspect is linked to the mother relationship with the son. From the text the intelligent reader may understand the priorities of the woman. While looking at the suffering son, she worries about the heredities and not about son’s health. The narrator wants to convey the depiction of a woman very attached to money, who has probably lived all his life below the son. I personally think this interpretation mirrors the conditions of a woman in Middle Ages as woman: they had to help the son arising himself staying on the side-lines. Therefore I imagine the mother as someone who needs revenge after a life like that.