Lord Randall

"Lord Randall"
Illustration by Arthur Rackham in Some British Ballads, ca. 1919
Song
Written	17th century (earliest known)
Genre	Border ballad, folk song
Songwriter(s)	Unknown

"Lord Randall", or "Lord Randal", (Roud 10, Child 12) is an Anglo-Scottish border ballad consisting of dialogue between a young Lord and his mother. Similar ballads can be found across Europe in many languages, including Danish, German, Magyar, Irish, Swedish, and Wendish.Italian variants are usually titled "L'avvelenato" ("The Poisoned Man") or "Il testamento dell'avvelenato" ("The Poisoned Man's Will"), the earliest known version being a 1629 setting by Camillo il Bianchino, in Verona.

Lord Randall returns home to his mother after visiting his lover. Through the mother's inquiry, it is gradually revealed that the Lord has been poisoned by his lover. The song usually includes details of Lord Randall's wishes for his possessions.

The English fiction writer Dorothy L. Sayers used a phrase from some variants for the title Strong Poison, a 1930 murder mystery about a man apparently murdered by his lover. In 1962, Bob Dylan modeled his song "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" on "Lord Randall," introducing each verse with variants of the introductory lines to each verse of "Lord Randall." Dylan's ballad is often interpreted as a reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Dylan himself disclaimed this as an oversimplification; actually, Dylan first publicly performed the song a month before the crisis.