Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” is a ballad that uses many metaphors and vivid imagery to make a statement about both the horrors and the hope of the modern world. Let’s look at it in more detail and then compare it to the medieval ballad “Lord Randal.”

Dylan’s ballad is a dialogue. Each stanza starts with two questions spoken by the parent of the primary speaker. The questions ask where the “blue-eyed son” has been, what he has seen and heard, whom he has met, and what he will do.

The son answers with many vivid images about “twelve misty mountains” and “a dozen dead oceans.” He has traveled far. He has seen many people, some of them in danger and suffering. He has seen violence and horror. He has heard thunder and waves, a person starving, the song of a poet, the cries of a clown. He has met many different people, wounded by love and by hate. He will return into the midst of it all where there is hunger and horror, and he will speak truth and sing his song so that all the people can hear it and perhaps find some hope.

Dylan has clearly modeled his ballad, at least in part, on the medieval “Lord Randal,” which also follows a dialogue pattern between a mother and son. “Lord Randal,” however, tells the story of a young man poisoned by his “true love.” We might say that Dylan expands on this theme, showing how many people have been poisoned by hatred and violence.