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LORD RANDAL AND GEORDIE

Giorgia Coppola

Created on November 10, 2023

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differences between

Lord Randal a Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

Lord Randal: structure and music

Lord Randal is a popular Scottish ballad written in the late Middle Ages (13th century) in form of questions and answers between a mother and her son, Lord Randal. The language of the ballad is simple, composed by 10 stanzas of four lines, in total 40 lines, and a lot of alliterations.

Lord Randal: plot

The ballad tells the story of Lord Randal, who went hunting in the woods with a hawk and hounds. In the woods he met his true love, who gave him eels fried in a pan. He ate the eels and gave the leftovers to his hawk and hounds, but since the eels were poisoned, they all died. Then, in the ballad is reported Lord Randal's will, which in the Middle Ages was a key element of the society, because it was a way for and individual to determine how their assets would be distribuited after death. Randal left to his family material things (like dairy cows, gold, silver, his house and his lands) and he left to his true love the flames of the hell.

a Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

The folk singer and poet Bob Dylan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, made in 1962 a version of the ballad "Lord Randal" called "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall".

differences between Lord Randal and a Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

Lord Randal and a Hard Rain's a gonna Fall are both ballads and they have also a similar structure, made of a dialogue (questions and answers) between a mother and his son, ending with a refrain. Both ballads are accompanied by music, have a colloquial language and they both deal with a tragic theme. But they are different in their meaning. Dylan's ballad was written in 1962 under the threat of a nuclear war between Russia and the USA and it is interpreted as a response to some issues of that era, like the Cuban Missile Crisis (in fact, "hard rain" metaphorically means the fall of missiles in Cuba).

Each stanza opens with a question: the mother asks where the "blue-eyed son" has been, what he has seen, who he has met and what he will do. He has seen a lot people in danger and suffering and he has seen violence and horror. The ballad ends with a message of hope in the salvation of the humanity: in fact, he will return where there is hunger and horror, and he will sing his song for all the people. Lord Randal, on the other hand, tells the story of a young man poisoned by his true love. We might say that Dylan expands on this theme, showing how many people have been poisoned by hate and violence.

Geordie

differences between the anonymous ballad and the Fabrizio De André's version

Gordie - English Ballad

Gordie is an anonymous English ballad may dated to the late Middle Ages.It is a compact dramatic story of love and death and presents a fairly complex narrative: it is composed by 8 stanzas of four lines, made up of narrations and dialogues. The storyteller isn't outside the ballad, but inside it as a character (he, in fact, opens the first stanza with indications of time and place, and introduces the two main characters of the story). The ballad has been interpred in a realistic way as a true story.

Geordie (ballad): music

The ballad's protagonist, Geordie, was found guilty of stealing the king's deer and was sentenced to hang. However, being of royal blood, he had the privilege of being hanged with a golden rope. His wife rode to London to beg for Geordie's life and was even willing to sacrifice her children. But her attempt was in vain: Geordie had already been killed.

Geordie - Fabrizio De André's version

Fabrizio De André was the first Italian artist to record, in 1965, an Italian version of the ballad. There are many differences with the english ballad. For example, De André writes that Geordie has stolen six dears of the king's royal lodge and sold them, but in the original version the dears were 16. Also, the autor adds some verse into the song for reasons of musicality.