Oh Where Ha’ You Been, Lord Randal, My Son by Anonymous

Title
Just considering the title the poem may be about an aristocratic man because there is the word “lord”. The possessive adjective “my” suggests a close relationship between Lord Randal and his mother. The question “Where have you been” makes think about the mother’s curiosity of knowing where her son has been.

Layout
Looking to the layout you understend the text is a poem because it is written in verse and not in prose. It shows a regular pattern: each stanza is arranged into four lines, therefore it is a quatrain. Also it alternates dialogues and narration.

Structure
The structure of the poem is regular: itis arrenged into ten quatreins, that are separated by blank spaces. The poet may choose this structure because in each stanza the mother asks a different question to her son.

Denotative analisys
The first stanza starts with Lord Randal’s mother’s question who asks where he has been. He answers he has just come back from hunting and he would like to go to bed because he is exhausted. In the second stanza the protagonist man tells his mother that he met his true-love in the forest and now the reader can understand there is a very possessive relationship from mother to her son. She wants to know everything about his life, she is really insistent. On the other hand Lord Randal gives orders to her: for example to make his bed as soon as possible. The adjective “true” suggest that probably Lord Randal has had previous love stories that made him sad, so he believed he has found his true-love. In the third stanza he says her true-love has given him eels fried in a pan. Lord Randal fell in love with her, but her gift conveys the idea of something slippery, therefore of an unstable relationship. In the following two stanzas the man says he has given his leavins of eels to hawks and hunds, who were killed just from those remains of food. In the sixth stanza the mother concludes that his son has been poisoned. He agrees and says that not only is he sick but also sick at the heart because he has suffered pains of love and he wants to lie down. The mother is worried about the consequences of his death and she wants to know what he will leave to his family. He replies he will leave twenty cows to his mother, his gold and his silver to his sister, his houses and his lands to his brother and last he will leave his hell and fire to his true-love.