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PART 1. ENGLISH LITERATURE

Tell us what you already know. (Activating prior knowledge)

1. Describe the emotional and physical conditions of a heart sick person..

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2. How would you comfort a broken hearted person?
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Let’s tackle Lesson 4!

Unit 1. Lesson 4. Lord Randall

The Author
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, (born August 15, 1771, Edinburgh, Scotland
—died September 21, 1832, Abbotsford, Roxburgh, Scotland).
 Scottish novelist, poet, historian, and biographer who are often
considered both the inventor and the greatest practitioner of the
historical novel.
 He married, in December 1797, Charlotte Carpenter, of a French
royalist family, with whom he lived happily until her death in 1826.
 In the mid-1790s Scott became interested in German Romanticism,
Gothic novels, and Scottish border ballads. His first published work,
The Chase, and William and Helen (1796), was a translation of two
ballads by the German Romantic balladeer G.A. Bürger. A poor
translation of Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen followed in 1799.

The Poem
Lord Randall
1 "Oh where ha'e ye been, Lord Randall my son?
2 O where ha'e ye been, my handsome young man?"
3 "I ha'e been to the wild wood: mother, make my bed soon,
4 For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

5 "Where gat ye your dinner, Lord Randall my son?

6 Where gat ye your dinner, my handsome young man?"
7 "I dined wi' my true love; mother, make my bed soon,
8 For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

9 "What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randall my son?

10 What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?"
11 "I gat eels boiled in broo: mother, make my bed soon,
12 For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

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13 "What became of your bloodhounds, Lord Randall my son?

14 What became of your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?"
15 "O they swelled and they died: mother, make my bed soon,
16 for I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."

17 "O I fear ye are poisoned, Lord Randall my son!

18 O I fear ye are poisoned, my handsome young man!"
19 "O yes, I am poisoned: mother, make my bed soon,
20 For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wald lie down."

Vocabulary (Definitions retrieved from Oxford Dictionary)

 Bloodhounds (n.) – a large hound of a breed with a very keen sense of
smell used in tracking
 Broo (n.) – the liquid in which food has been cooked
 Eels (n.) – elongated fish, ranging in length from 2 inches to 13 feet
 Fain (adj.) – one who’s willing, inclined and glad
 Gat (v.) – archaic past of get
 Wald (v.) – from old English wealdon to rule, control, direct and exercise
 Ye (pronoun) – an old English meaning you. Only used when talking to more
than one person

Symbolisms
 Weariness – (death)
 Poison – stand in for pains of love and betrayal
 Bed – symbolizes his death bed
 Eels – are the most snakelike of fish and it symbolizes evilness.

Figures of Speech
 Anaphora – repetition of the first word/s in subsequent lines of a poem
(Lines 1 & 2) “Oh” and “O”
(Lines 5-6) “Where”
(Lines 9-14) “What”
(Lines 17-19) “O”
 Alliteration – repetition of a sound at the beginning of words.
(Line 3) wild wood /w/
(Line 7) mother make /m/
 Rhetorical Question – are not meant to answered but to make a point or
ensure some dramatic effect

Interpretation (Schwartz, C. & Sowersby, K., 2003)

Lines 1-2
"Oh where ha'e ye been, Lord Randall my son?
O where ha'e ye been, my handsome young man?"
• The first two lines establish the poem's formula: the mother asks
questions to her son (her "handsome young man," which he answers in
the second half of the stanza.
• But hey, at least she ends it with a compliment, calling her kiddo a

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"handsome young man." There's love there! Not just nagging.

• Allow us one brief Scottish vocab explanation: "ha'e" is a contraction of
"have," so every time you see it, you can make that substitution.

Lines 3-4
"I ha'e been to the wild wood: mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."
• In this original version of the refrain, he asks his mother to make his bed,
because he's tired from hunting in the woods. Our suspicions might also
be roused by this line. After all, Lord Randall is a bold young man, and
his old ladyish complaint here seems a little out of place. Why is he so
tired? What has he really been up to?
• Another note on linguistic weirdness: "wi'," like "ha'e" is another
contraction, this time for "with." While we're on this archaic word
explaining kick, we should tell you that "I fain wald lie down" basically
means "I'd really like to lie down"; "fain wald" is another old-fashioned,
poetic way of stating desire.
• The gist here is that this dude is not in good shape after his time in the
wild wood. Whatever happened there has tuckered him out—a lot.

Lines 5-6
"Where gat ye your dinner, Lord Randall my son?
Where gat ye your dinner, my handsome young man?"
 Lord Randall's somewhat nagging mom begins by asking another familiar
parent-type question: "Where did you eat?" ("gat" being a Scottified
version of "got"). Her son totally can't just head off to bed without having
eaten.
 Note how her questions follow the same formula, ending in "Lord Randall
my son" and "my handsome young man." This is a classic trait of the
British ballad. This kind of pattern is the same thing we see in a song like
"The Twelve Days of Christmas," in which a formulaic set-up—for
example, "On the nth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…"—
helps us remember and keep track of the evolving list of things.
 It's the same deal here.

Lines 7-8
"I dined wi' my true love; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."
 Lord Randall, who's not exactly the most forthcoming of speakers,
answers that he dined with his true love. That is, he had a dinner date
with his special lady friend. The love of his life.
 And again, the refrain comes back. Get used to it, since it'll appear in
every stanza. Again, the emphasis on Lord Randall's exhaustion jumps
out at us. We don't know what's wrong with him yet, but we're getting a
bad feeling about it.
 After all, he is asking his mother to make his bed for him, right after he's
saying he dined with his true love. Shouldn't he be less exhausted and
more in a good mood?

Lines 9-10

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"What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randall my son?

What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?"
 So Lord Randall's nosy mother already asked where he ate dinner, and
now she wants to know what he ate there
 When she says "what gat ye to your dinner," we would say "what did you
get for dinner?" Pretty standard question.

Lines 11-12
"I gat eels boiled in broo: mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."
 Lord Randall's answer to his ma's pretty standard question may not seem
so standard to us modern day readers. He responds that he ate "eels
boiled in broo" (we imagine "broo" is a kind of broth. An archaic spelling
of "brew," perhaps?).

Lines 13-14
"What became of your bloodhounds, Lord Randall my son?
What became of your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?"
 Lord Randall's mother notices that his dogs (bloodhounds are a kind of
hunting dog) are missing. Where did they go?
 More nagging questions from the mom. More worries for the readers.

Lines 15-16
"O they swelled and they died mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain wald lie down."
 Oh dear… the dogs, it turns out, met a terrible end. They didn't just die—
they swelled and they died, which is particularly awful. They clearly met
an unnatural death.
 The refrain swoops in for a fourth go-around. Clearly, the air of menace
that has been building with every repetition has come to a head here,
with this evidence of tragic dog-murder. We're starting to get the idea
that poor Randy is weary from more than just hunting.

Lines 17-18
"O I fear ye are poisoned, Lord Randall my son!
O I fear ye are poisoned, my handsome young man!"
 Hearing that the poor pups died in this terrible way after dinner, Lord
Randall's mother figures out the trouble—her son has also been
poisoned.
 Must have been those dodgy eels…
 Needless to say, we're betting mama's gone from nagging to frantic by
now. This revelation brings a whole new meaning to what her son's been
saying all along.

Lines 19-20
"O yes, I am poisoned mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wald lie down.
 Lord Randall confirms that he has been poisoned. It was his so-called
"true love" who committed the crime, for reasons we'll never know.
 Here, Lord Randall's refrain changes to reflect the fact that we know his
fate now. Instead of simply saying that he's tired and needs to lie down,

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he asks his mother to make his bed (we now realize that he means his
death bed), because he's "sick at heart."
 "Sick" here both refers to his poisoned state, and to his brokenhearted
misery. It's never stated directly in this version of the ballad, but we take
this to be a definite sign that he was poisoned by his unfaithful girlfriend.
 We also finally realize that Lord Randall's many references to being tired
and going to bed are actually talking about a very different kind of bed,
as in a coffin.
 This euphemism, which draws a link between going to sleep and the Big
Sleep, was pretty common in Medieval and Renaissance literature.

• It becomes quite clear early in the poem that something is wrong with Lord
Randall, and we find out that he is, in fact, poisoned. However, when he states
his sickness at heart we begin to suspect that it was his lover who poisoned him.
Finally, when his mother asks what he will leave his lover, and he answers with
pain and suffering for her, we're convinced that it was she who brought about
his end.
• Although it's logical that a young man may be tired after hunting all day, people
do not usually write popular songs about just being tired. Where's the story
here? When we hear Lord Randall ask his mother to make his bed, readers are
tipped off that 'making his bed' is actually an allusion to wrapping up his affairs
and preparing him for death

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