Cultural Uses
The English fiction writer Dorothy L. Sayers used a phrase from some variants for the title Strong Poison, a murder mystery about a man apparently murdered by his lover. In 1962, Bob Dylan modelled 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." E.g., "where have you been/ my blue-eyed son/ and where have you been/ my darling young one." Dylan's ballad is often interpreted as a reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis (although Dylan has disclaimed this as an oversimplification); in this case, the poison of "Lord Randall" becomes the poison of nuclear fallout. The song "Pictures in a Mirror" from the album "I Looked Up" by the Incredible String Band, mentions Lord Randall. The nursery rhyme "Billy Boy" borrows the verse structure and the narrative format about a suitor visiting his lover, with a happier ending.
The poem is repeatedly alluded to in the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger.
In the novel Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck, the character Mack quotes the recurring phrase of the poem while lying defeated in his bed.
Read more about this topic: Lord Randall
Famous quotes containing the word cultural:
“Barbarisation may be defined as a cultural process whereby an attained condition of high value is gradually overrun and superseded by elements of lower quality.”
—Johan Huizinga (18721945)
“The men who are messing up their lives, their families, and their world in their quest to feel man enough are not exercising true masculinity, but a grotesque exaggeration of what they think a man is. When we see men overdoing their masculinity, we can assume that they havent been raised by men, that they have taken cultural stereotypes literally, and that they are scared they arent being manly enough.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)