The poem is a folk ballad; right from the title the reader understands that Randal is the main character and belongs to aristocracy therefore the intelligent reader expects something typical of the life of reach people, probably some rituals of the aristocratic class.

The ballad consists of 10 four - line - stanzas arranged in the dialogue's form between Lord Randal and his mother. The dialogue form allows the reader to have an objective view of the situation. It is a narrative poem and according to the typical conventions of ballad, it starts with the climatic episode of the story: Lord Randal has been poisoned by his "true - love" while hunting and has just come back home.

The poem starts with the mother's voice: she is worried, she wants to know when her son has been. In the first two lines the intelligent reader can immediately understand the relationship of affection of the mother towards her son. The composer uses the repetition of the possessive adjective "my" before "son" and "man". In addition the adjectives "handsome" and "young" both underline the idea the mother has of her son.

Immediately afterwards the reader understands that Lord Randal has a patronizing attitude towards his mother: he gives orders and expects the mother to obey. In addition, this family hierarchy is rendered by: the verb tenses used by Lord Randal (imperative tenses), the alliteration of M and N that give strength to the son, the syntax; the mother uses interrogative form, Lord Randal uses affirmative form.

The mother is worried about the future death of the son for two orders of reasons: she expresses the typical affection of the relationship mother – son she is worried about the future of the family because Randal was the first son. At line n.7 there's an important word: "true - love". It can be interpreted in two ways: the first is a rhetoric use of the language, because his lover had killed him; the second reason why the poet uses this word is because he wants to underline the stupidity of Lord Randal: he doesn't understand that his lover had killed him. Alliteration of sound M and recreates the feeling of the mother' suffering and the alliteration of sound W focuses the reader's attention on Lord Randal.

You can make a very simple characterization of the protagonist starting from the text: the use of the language makes us understand the characterization even if it was not built by the writer.

Lord Randal's characterization is: Lord (position in the society), Randal (name), handsome (physical aspect), hunter (hobby), patronizing behavior.

The ballad exhibits the typical features of this kind of texts: arranged into quatrains, using a lot of repetition and incremental repetition, very simple language which at the same time can return to the reader the idea of the context.