Literary device: Question and answer.
STORY: a young man, coming home from a day's hunting, is
apparently tired. The young man's mother draws information out of him which
eventually reveals that he's been poisoned by his true love.
Three of the five stanzas deal with food: one, where he
ate; two, what he ate; and three, what happened to the leftovers. By the time
we discover that the dogs were poisoned ("they swell'd and they
died"), it's clear that Randall will suffer the same fate.
INCREMENTAL REPETITION: ''For I'm weary wi' hunting and
fain would lie down" is the refrain of the earlier stanzas; it's switched
to "For I'm sick at the heart and fain would lie down" in the last
line of the final stanza. Why? Randall now identifies a broken and betrayed
heart, not physical fatigue, as the source of his weariness.
Some extra info!
"Lord Randall" (Roud 10, Child 12) is an
Anglo-Scottish border ballad, a traditional ballad consisting of dialogue. The
different versions follow the same general lines, the primary character (in
this case Randall, but varying by location) is poisoned, usually by his
sweetheart; this is revealed through a conversation where he reports on the
events and the poisoner. Variants of this ballads are found in German, Swedish,
Magyar, Danish, Wendish. Similar ballads exist across the continent of Europe.
There are, for example different Italian versions, usually titled
"L'avvelenato" ('The Poisoned Man') or "Il testamento
dell'avvelenato". In the early 1960s Bob Dylan borrowed its
structure for "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall".
Golden plus for info on "L'avvelenato"
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