In a course I took at the University of Washington English Department entitled "The Popular Ballad" and taught by Prof. David C. Fowler, our term paper consisted of tracing the history (provenance) of the ballad of our choice (Child), using whatever resources we could find, such as libraries, ballad collections, regional folklore society bulletins, et al. Dr. Fowler warned us that some of us would find a pretty cold trail, others would be inundated with material.

A classmate and friend of mine decided to research "Lord Randal" (Child #12). He managed to find some 1,013 distinct versions of the ballad. Each one somewhat different, but all telling the same story and all having a similar verse structure. Some were very long, some fairly short, nevertheless, obviously the same ballad.

Now here's where it gets cute:   there were English versions, Scottish and Irish versions, Welsh versions. He also found references to Scandinavian versions (the song was known in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark). The name of the dying young man varied, but it was obviously the same ballad.

In fact, he found versions all over Europe, there were Middle East versions, and it made its way to North Africa.

Then, of course, there are varying versions of it that have been collected in the United States. One version seems to have been adapted by the dairy industry as a sort of propaganda song, in which young Jimmy Randal is poisoned because his sweetheart fed him oleomargarine instead of butter.

And believe it or not, the American comic song "Billy Boy"

"Oh, where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy,
Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?" (Look it up.)

is obviously a comic parody of "Lord Randal."

Note:   It is extreme rare to the point of being essentially nonexistent when a traditional ballad can be traced back to its "original" source, i.e., the scop, skald, bard, gleeman, troubadour, or minstrel who may have written it.

So—is "Lord Randal" an English ballad? Or Irish? Or Norwegian? Or Yugoslavian? Or Syrian? Or—Algerian? Southern Appalachian?

I learned it originally from A Treasury of Folk Songs, a drugstore paperback compiled and edited by John and Sylvia Kolb, that I bought in 1952. I then modified it a bit after hearing a record on which Richard Dyer-Bennet sang it. I don't know where he got it.

Don Firth