[Excerpt From British Ballads and their Conntinental Relations p. 17-20, by Gerould, 1932]
Consider the famous instance of Lord Randal (12), which has been found as far east as Czecho-Slovakia and Hungary, as far north as Scotland and Sweden, and as far south as Calabria. More than three hundred years ago an Italian professional singer, advertising his wares in easy verse on a broadside printed at Verona[1], quoted three lines which unmistakably belong to L'Avvelenato, as that ballad has been found in circulation up and down the peninsula within the last half-century; and L'Avvelenato is so close in form and content to our familiar "Lord Randal that certain versions might be taken as
paraphrases of one another.
"Where supped you yestereve,
Dear son mine, noble and wise?"
"Oh, I am dying,
Ohime!"
"Where supped you yestereve,
My noble knight?"
"I was at my lady's
I am sick at the heart,
How sick am I!
I was at my lady's,
My life's at an end."
"What supper did she give you,
Dear son mine, noble and wise?"
"Oh, I am dying,
Ohime!"
"What supper did she give you,
My gentle knight?'
"An eel that was roasted,
Mother, dear mother;
I am sick at the heart,
How sick am I!
An eel that was roasted,
My life's at an end."
The lines roughly translated above were taken down by D'Ancona[2] in the country near Pisa some sixty years ago; and the opening is almost identical with that quoted in the Veronese broadside of 1629. Compare them with the first three stanzas of a Scottish version of Lord Randal (12 A), which was copied out in the eighteenth century:
'O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha you been, my handsome young man?'
O I ha' been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down.'
"An wha met ye there, Lord Randal, my son?
An wha met you there, my handsome young man?'
"O I met wi my true-love; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi huntin, an fain wad lie down."
"And what did she give you, Lord Randal, my son?
And what did she give you, my handsome young man?"
"Eels fried in a pan; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi huntin, and fain wad lie down."
Detailed comment is superfluous. It is not a question of different songs with the same theme, but of the same ballad in circulation over wide areas. In spite of translation from language to language, there are similarities of phrase that establish the identity, which is furthermore shown by the marked likeness in the way the story is introduced and developed. The mother questions the son, who has come back to her mortally ill after eating what seemed to be eels, but were probably snakes; and
she learns, as the dialogue progresses, the horrid truth. The amazing coincidence between the Italian and English forms, it is fair to say, does not extend to all the European versions of Lord Randal. Although they keep the general outline of the story unaltered, the actors vary greatly: the young man with a vindictive sweetheart becomes a child with a wicked step-mother, a girl with a murderous aunt, or a boy with an unnatural grandmother. The English versions themselves, indeed, illustrate the ease with which tradition plays upon such changes, for they are by no means consistent in the persons whom they introduce. In short, there is quite as much reason for believing that the very same ballad exists in all the European forms as there is for gathering the English and Scottish versions of the story under the single heading of Lord Randal.
It need occasion no surprise, nor should it arouse any scepticism about what has just been said, that the migrations of what we may for convenience call Lord Randal cannot be traced as it has passed from land to land. Only to a very limited extent have the movements of ballads within a given area of speech been studied as yet; and possibly the attempt to establish definite routes of exchange over larger areas may never be completely successful, though the matter deserves far more research
than has been given to it. Certainly it is odd that in the case of Lord Randal the nearest approximation among the various forms should be between those found in Italian and English, 1 whereas no French version as far as I know has been collected; yet in our present state of ignorance about the methods and means of diffusion we can do no better tan to say humbly that we cannot
tell whether the song travelled by land or by sea, nor yet whether it travelled from Italy to Great Britain instead of in the opposite direction. There may have been unrecorded French versions, for anything we know, and the earlier record of the ballad in Italy by no means proves that it originated in the South. All we can be certain of is the identity of the song.[3]
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Footnotes:
1 A. d'Ancona, Poesia popolare italiana, 2nd ed., 1906, p. 124; Child, i. 152.
2. D'Ancona, op. cit. 9 pp. 124-5.
3 D'Ancona's belief (see Poesia popolare italiana, 2nd ed., 1906) that most of Italy's folk-songs originated in Sicily, and were diffused through Tuscany, is very insecurely based, though often quoted. His admission (p. 136) that a large number of narrative songs came in from the north shows the fragility of his argument. The importance of Provence as a distributing centre has not been sufficiently stressed, it would appear. The matter deserves study.