Lord Randall- Brigham (MA) pre1830 JAF Brown
[From: Lord Randall by Harold Gibson Brown; The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 44, No. 173 (Jul. - Sep., 1931), p. 302. This version is unusual in the name- Lord Randall- is not the traditional Massachusetts name (it's Tiranti/Tyranty). If we assume that the name wasn't supplied to the informant, Robinson, then this is a rare version, as a well as an old one.
Brown's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2014]
LORD RANDALL
Some years ago while hunting for ballads in eastern Massachusetts I had the good fortune to encounter Mrs. Florence Brookhouse Robinson of Cambridge. Mrs. Robinson claimed to know a dozen or fifteen ballads learned in youth from various relatives and from her nurse. But she proved to be unable to remember any of them. Finally, however, at her own suggestion, she borrowed a baby to hold in her arms while she sang; and having thus reproduced the conditions under which she had last sung these ballads many years before, she was able to remember. She then sang some literary songs, some broadside material, and several of the older ballads. Perhaps the most interesting item is a stanza from "Lord Randall", which she had learned in about 1875 from her aunt, Harriet P. Brigham, who was then about seventy years old and who (Mrs. Robinson thought) had learned it before 1830 from her grandmother. Anyone who knows oral tradition, New England cookery, and the version "striped eels fried in butter."
(Child 12, I, c.) could prophecy the variant which appears in line:
What had you for supper, Lord Randall my son?
What had you for supper, my best beloved one?
Striped eels fried in batter; Mother make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart and I fain would lie down.
HAROLD GIBSON BROWN