A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Lord Randal"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Anonymous's "Lord Randal," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535827638

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1

Lord Randal

Anonymous

1629

Introduction

Lord Randal is a traditional Scottish ballad. Scholars believe its original source to be an Italian ballad, L’Avvelenato. The earliest printing of this Italian version exists in a 1629 advertisement for a performance by a singer in Verona, in which excerpts of the ballad appear. The Scottish version is found in Francis James Child’s famous collection of English and Scottish ballads, which was published in five volumes from 1882 to 1898. Along with the Italian source, Child recognizes versions of the Lord Randal story from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Sweden, and Calabria. Like most ballads, it is difficult to date precisely, and it probably existed in oral tradition earlier than the seventeenth-century reference to it.

As are all traditional ballads, Lord Randal is a narrative song—a song that tells a story. Ballads tell their stories directly, with an emphasis on climactic incidents, by stripping away those details that are not essential to the plot. Lord Randal tells of a man who has been poisoned by his lover. It does not give any details about the background incident; in this case, the listener does not know why Lord Randal has been poisoned. The ballad refers to it merely as the event that triggers the action. The action itself consists of Lord Randal’s revelation that he has been poisoned, a statement of his last will and testament, and his final curse on the lover who killed