Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings

Subject: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: RobbieWilson
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 07:05 PM

I have read several threads which mention Lord Randall as very old, the evidence being it's many and widespread variants and I thought it might be a good idea to pull them together in one place.

The Billy boy discussion seems to point to a reworking, or at least starting from the basics of Lord Randall creating a new kind of song. It occurred to me that Ilkley Moor Baht 'at is also very similar. While I have no reason to doubt any of Geoff the Duck's very clear explanation of the writing of that song origin of On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at I don't think that stops it having roots in an older song that the author is likely to have heard, the old unconcious plagiarism. Where are you going Lord Ramble my son.

Anyway to come back to the point of my inquiry; what songs do people know to be, or even think may be derived from "Lord Randall" and just how old is Lord Randall anyway?

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Leadfingers
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 07:44 PM

Green and Yellow Is one I have enjoyed since Nineteen Canteen

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 07:56 PM

Lord Randall and links:
Origins: Lord Randall: thread 10062:
origins Lord Randall

A thread on a parody is liked there.

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 10:21 PM

"...it might be a good idea to pull them together in one place."

It's been done .... a group of ballad collectors has assembled 'about' 130-150 recorded versions, depending on how you count. (Are 3 recordings by the same artist different? Are recordings using 'almost' the same text but recorded by different artists counted as 'several'?)

If all you want is variations in lyrics, you have to make some rules as to how 'different' they must be.

The more popular the basic ballad story, the trickier it becomes.

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Effsee
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 10:26 PM

Ah Terry, you just shot me back 40 years! Ollie Bright wasn't it, at the Attic in Singapore?

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: RTim
Date: 10 Sep 12 - 10:46 PM

Look at the listings on The Child Ballad site below:
http://members.chello.nl/r.vandijk2/

Click on Lord Randall and you can see all recorded versions!!

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: MartinRyan
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 02:58 AM

Green and Yellow Is one I have enjoyed since Nineteen Canteen


I still sing a close relative of that one, learnt at a Boy Scout camp in the North of England in the late '50's.

Regards

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 10:11 AM

Robbie,
Perhaps you could explain in what way, shape or form Billy Boy can be related to any versions of Lord Randal. Without looking in great depth I have a 1776 printed version of Billy Boy called 'My Son Johnny O' in 12 stanzas. All 12 stanzas, just like the many oral versions, simply involve a mother asking questions about her son's new bride and the lad's answers, no poisoning, in fact the only negative is she's not fit to go to the well but he can do that anyway.

As for 'Ilkley Moor' being related, well that's surely cloud-cuckoo land!

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 10:16 AM

"It's a Hard Rain's a-gonna Fall".

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 11:04 AM

The best place to start looking would be Bertrand Bronson's Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. That plus Child itself of course.

The best place for a listing of sources of collected/printed versions is probably Steve Roud's Folk Song and Broadside Indexes. http://library.efdss.org/cgi-bin/query.cgi?cross=off&index_roud=on&query=10&field=20&access=off

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 11:13 AM

RTim... yes, that's the collection I referred to. I have 'most' of the list.

(I sing about 4-5 of them. It can be disconcerting when your brain switches versions in the middle of a song.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Owen Woodson
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 11:37 AM

Sorry, I pressed the GO button before I'd finished.

Child and Bronson are the best single sources. Looking up the link above will give you a listing of all the English language sources, hard copy, audio or whatever, which Steve has compiled in his Index. At present, listings for Lord Randal total 617.

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Brian Peters
Date: 11 Sep 12 - 12:03 PM

According to Child, the oldest instance of something recognizable as Lord Randal is an Italian broadside of 1629 presenting a medley of songs which includes three lines of the ballad 'L'Avvelenato', which was still current in Italy during the 19th century. FJC gives no translation, but from his description 'L'Avvelenato' resembles Lord Randal very closely. The Scots and English examples are much more recent.

Bronson regarded 'Billy Boy' as a parody, and added it as an appendix to Lord Randal. The first two verses ("Where have you been all the day?" and "What did she give you to eat?") follow the Randal pattern, but after that it goes off somewhere else entirely. There doesn't seem to be much similarity in the tunes, either.

As Dave Mackenzie says, 'Hard Rain' is generally supposed to be based on Lard Randal, but I'm not sure of the source for that. I believe that Dylan did have a full set of Child Ballads on his bookshelves in Greenwich Village, so it's not unlikely.

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: Cattia
Date: 02 Aug 20 - 04:59 PM

L'avvelenato (The poisoned man), or Il testamento dell'Avvelenato (The will of the poisoned man), is an Italian ballad attested for the first time in a repertoire of popular songs published in 1629 in Verona by a Florentine, Camillo the Bianchino. It was then also reproduced by Alessandro d'Ancona in his essay "La poesia popolare italiana': the author expresses the opinion that the original text was Tuscan and contains some versions from the Como area and Lucca. Translated in Folk-ballads of Southern Europe edited by Sophie Jewett, Katharine Lee Bates, 1913.
To date there are almost 200 regional versions of this ballad, based on the dialogue between mother (or sometimes the wife) and son who in some regions is called Henry, in other Peppino in others, as in Canton Ticino, Guerino: other characters are the doctor, the confessor and the notary, only in the final we learn that his wife is the guilty (in some versions the sister or more rarely the mother)
see lyrics and translations in https://terreceltiche.altervista.org/il-testamento-dellavvelenato-2/

Subject: RE: Origins: Lord Randall variants/reworkings
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 02 Aug 20 - 05:09 PM

One of the funniest broad parodies I have ever seen of Lord Randall
was in Mad Magazine,
but I doubt that it belongs on THIS thread.

(hint:
Matt Dillon in the Wild West, on television)