Lord Randal

The title of the ballad creates expectations about a person belonging to a specific social class: aristocracy. The ballad consists of ten quatrains with two rhyming couplets each (the rhyme scheme AABB) and the reader can find Scottish expressions in it (wha, hawks, hounds).

The ballad is in form of dialogue between mother and son. The reader can make up an idea of the two characters through their words. As a consequence, he better understands the relationship between different family members during the Middle Ages.

The mother insistently asks questions to Lord Randal, using refrain and incremental repetition (a dance-like pattern is built up by the narrator). At first, she wants to know where he had been and the reader gets information about the setting from Lord Randal's answer ( he went to the wood when grass was green, so in the beautiful season). You also know that he is tired now and wants to go to bed. She becomes curios and asks him if he has met somebody in the wood and he answers he has met his true love, who gave him some food. The mother wants to know what happened to his dogs: they died on the way home. Now, she is worried because she thinks he has been poisoned by the lover and asks Lord Randal about inheritance. He tells her what he is going to give her, to his sister, to his brother (houses, land, silver, cows) and to his true love (hell and fire). The adjective true is ironical: the composer used it to underline that the lover betrayed Lord Randal.

The reader knows characters trough their actions. He immediately gets the idea of medieval woman suggested by the ballad. She is a weak figure of society, she can't make important choices and decisions (for example about inheritance) and she can't own properties and goods.

This Scottish ballad deals with two typical topics of ballad: the supernatural and tragic love stories and, as I said, its structure is pertaining to this genre.