Lord Randal
Lord Randal Criticism
Carolyn Meyer
Carolyn Meyer holds a Ph.D. in modern British and Irish literature and has taught contemporary literature at several Canadian universities, including the University of Toronto. In the following essay, Meyer gives a general overview of the ballad form and a specific analysis of “Lord Randal.”
By turns scandalous and heart-wrenching, the popular folk ballad known as “Lord Randal” rivals any of today’s tabloid tales in its swift and urgent encapsulation of youthful passion, maternal jealousy, bitter rejection, murderous betrayal, and scornful reproach. Though it speaks to us today because of what it shares with the familiar mainstays of the popular press and also because of its timeless themes of love and death, its origins can be traced back as far as the fourteenth century, with its clearest antecedent coming from seven-teenth – century Italy, where the song “L’Avvele-nato” (“The Poisoned Man”) popularized the story of a young man murdered by his mistress, according to Alfred B. Friedman in his The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World. Later, this narrative poem, by way of translation, made its way to England and Scotland. From there, the poem’s perennial appeal spawned countless variants worldwide, even as far afield as Europe and Canada, with the young huntsman of the title going under an array of aliases — from Duranty and Durango in Oklahoma to Johnny Randolph in Virginia and McDonald in South Carolina. What is common to most versions is the standard ballad motif of the nuncupative testament (or spoken will) voiced by the murder victim himself who, as he dies, vows undying hatred and bequeaths not wealth but eternal damnation to the true love who ultimately proves so false. Helping to sustain the ballad narrative in a memorable way is the dialogue between mother and son that serves as its vehicle as well as the insistent strains of incremental repetition that add to its sense of immediacy and intensity....
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