The title 'Lord Randal' is selected for this ballad because that name occurs in one of the better versions, and because it has become familiar through Scott's Minstrelsy. Scott says that the hero was more generally termed Lord Ronald: but in the versions that have come down to us this is not so. None of these can be traced back further than a century. #F# and #D# were the earliest published. Jamieson remarks with respect to #G# (1814): "An English gentleman, who had never paid any attention to ballads, nor ever read a collection of such things, told me that when a child he learnt from a playmate of his own age, the daughter of a clergyman in Suffolk, the following imperfect ditty." #I#, a version current in eastern Massachusetts, may be carried as far back as any. #a#, #b# derive from Elizabeth Foster, whose parents, both natives of eastern Massachusetts, settled, after their marriage, in Maine, where she was born in 1789. Elizabeth Foster's mother is remembered to have sung the ballad, and I am informed that the daughter must have learned it not long after 1789, since she was removed in her childhood from Maine to Massachusetts, and continued there till her death. 'Tiranti' ['Taranti'] may not improbably be a corruption of Lord Randal. The copy in Smith's Scottish Minstrel, III, 58, is Scott's altered. The first four stanzas are from the Border Minstrelsy, except the last line of the fourth, which is from Johnson's Museum. The last two stanzas are a poor modern invention. Three stanzas which are found in #A#. Cunningham's Scottish Songs, I, 286 f, may be given for what they are worth. 'The house of Marr,' in the first, is not to be accepted on the simple ground of its appearance in his pages. The second is inserted in his beautified edition of Scott's ballad, and has its burden accordingly; but there is, besides this, no internal evidence against the second, and none against the third. 'O where have you been, Lord Ronald, my son? O where have you been, my handsome young man?' 'At the house of Marr, mother, so make my bed soon, For I'm wearied with hunting, and fain would lie down.' 'O where did she find them, Lord Randal, my son? O where did she catch them, my handsome young man?' 'Neath the bush of brown bracken, so make my bed soon, For I'm wae and I'm weary, and fain would lie down.' 'O what got your bloodhounds, Lord Ronald, my son? O what got your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?' 'They lapt the broo, mother, so make my bed soon, I am wearied with hunting, and fain would lie down.' A pot-pourri or quodlibet, reprinted in Wolff's Egeria, p. 53, from a Veronese broadside of the date 1629, shows that this ballad was popular in #Italy# more than 250 years ago; for the last but one of the fragments which make up the medley happens to be the first three lines of 'L'Avvelenato,' very nearly as they are sung at the present day, and these are introduced by a summary of the story: