Lord Randall Ewan MacColl (Child 12)

Lord Randall
Ewan MacColl
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads: Vol. 1 - Child Ballads
Child's Ballad No. 12
Lord Randall has many different versions, and often times different names. The story is generally the same though, with the man being poisoned in some way by his lover, the events being told in conversation.
In the early 1960s Bob Dylan uses the song's form as an allusion in "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall". Dylan's ballad, however, utilizes the answer to spell out an apocalyptic fall of hard rain.
The nursery rhyme "Billy Boy" borrows the verse structure and the narrative format about a suitor visiting his lover, with a happier ending.