medieval ballads

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Medieval Ballads

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Lord Randal

Lord Randal is a Scottish-Anglophone ballad probably composed around the 13th century, structured as a dialogue between a mother and her son. Currently, the mother's name is not known, but we know the name of the son, "Randal", who is the protagonist of the ballad; even the author of the ballad remained unknown.

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Lord Randal's plot

The plot of the ballad is a direct speech between Lord Randal and his mother, in which the two characters discuss what happened in the forest, where Randal was probably poisoned, by the very girl he loved.

The ballad is very repetitive, following the typical pattern of the "English ballad, and is divided into 10 quatrains, which contain a total of 40 verses. The only stanza which doesn't contain questions and answers is the 6th and it's important because Lord Randal's mother confess her terrible suspicion. “Lord Randal” is collected among the traditional English and Scottish folk dances and songs cataloged in the “Child Ballads”.

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A Hard Rain's a-gonna Fall

There is a curious connection between the ballad of Lord Randal and other medieval ballads is the one with the song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" by Bob Dylan. This ballad was written in October 1962 under the threat of a nucler war between Russia and the USA. Each stanza opens with a question; Dylan questions his son, who isn't born yet, on where he has been, who he has met ecc... Lord Randal's mother has done. His answer are full of words which recall in death and blood, but, the song ends with a message of hope in the salvation of the humanity, and we can find it in the last line where Bob Dylan sings "it's hard, hard... rain's gonna fall".

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Geordie

Geordie is a famous anonymous ballad of the late Middle Ages. The main character is a young woman who is going on her horse with her children at the court of justice of London where her lover, Geordie, is about to be executed for poaching. But it's too late: Geordie was hanged because he stole sixteen of the king's deer and had them sold. The girl declares her devotion to her lover, she is ready to kill with her sword and her gun and to die for him. The atmosphere of this ballad is of death and violence but the element of the mystery is less marked than in the others.

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Geordie by Fabrizio d'Andrè

The ballad Georgie was revisited by Fabrizio De Andrè, in the song Geordie. There are many similarities between these two songs, in fact, De Andrè talks about this woman who was crying for her lover, Georgie, who had stolen six deer, because of this theft he was hanged with a golden rope, from this we understand that the boy belongs to a noble family. As regards the differences we can see that De Andrè adds some more verses, and that the deer that Georgie stole instead of 16 are 6.