Lord Randal

Original Track ID

SA1952.12.B1 (B10)

Original Tape ID

SA1952.012

Summary

Lord Ronald returns home feeling ill, his mother asks where he has been, and he says he has dined with his true love. She asks what he ate; he says small, black-backed, speckled-bellied fishes caught from his father's black ditches. His bloodhounds have also eaten the fish and died, and his mother says he is poisoned. He leaves his house and land to his father and brother, to his sister his gold box, and to his true love a rope and halter to hang her.

Item Notes

Text transcribed in School of Scottish Studies. 11 verses. The text in Willie Mathieson's MS appears to have been copied from Roberts, 'Legendary Ballads', but his sung text is modified by recollections of an orally obtained text, which he got with the tune 'Villikins'.

This ballad has been collected as far east as Slovakia, as far north as Sweden, as far south as Calabria and as far west as British Columbia. It was first seen in print almost 500 hundred years ago on a broadside in Verona as 'L'Avvelenato', a traditional Piedmontese poem.

See:
Greig-Duncan vol. 2, pp. 60-65
Willie Mathieson's MSS II:110

Recording Location

Language

Scots

Genre

Song

Collection

SoSS

Classification

R10 GD209 C12

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good