Jonty Claypole

And I'll put another lute in before it begins.

Here we go.

When we decided we were going to do this episode, you scoffed at me because I said, I've got to read Chaucer.

I've got to have a translation next to me.

And you scoffed because you don't need a translation, which is fair enough.

You've been teaching it.

But I think it's worth giving a translation of that.

Just in case anyone listening is feeling a bit dusty on their Middle English.

And actually, we should stress, it sounds more alien than it is.

So when Sophie was reading that, it's very hard to follow.

But actually, when you're looking on the page, very few words are actually different.

Maybe only one or two words in a line.

So it's as much about the pronunciation changing.

So what you're hearing is still Chaucer.

It's not like other translations where you're getting a different work essentially as mediated by a translator.

When April with its sweet smelling showers has pierced the drought of March to the root and bathed every vein in such liquid by which power the flower is created.

When the west wind also, with its sweet breath in every wood and field, has breathed life into the tender new leaves, and the young sun has run half its course in Aries, and small fowls make melody, those that sleep all the night with open eyes, so nature incites them in their hearts.

Then folk long to go on pilgrimages.

and professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores, to distant shrines known in various lands, and especially from every shire's end of England to Canterbury they wend, to seek the holy blessed martyr who helped them when they were sick.

Can I remove the pants from my head?