Sophie Gee

And if you start feeling as though you're getting a little bit of

bawdy or sexualized imagery in this opening, you're not misreading it at all.

We're kind of at, we're at a medieval pool party.

Everything is wet.

It's open to the elements.

It's warming up and people are looking for fun.

And then we learn that the

What Chaucer means by this is that we're in the astrological moment of Aries, right?

The sun is in the ram.

But what do we associate with vigorous young rams, especially in April?

They want to have sex.

What happens next in the sentence?

We're told that this is the time of year when smaller fools, little birds, muck and melody.

And these are a special kind of bird, Chaucer adds, who sleep all night with their eyes open.

Now, I'm actually unable to weigh in on the question of whether birds sleep with their eyes open.

But if you think about humans who sleep all night with their eyes open, who are those humans?

They're humans who aren't sleeping.

And why aren't they sleeping?

Because they're having sex too, which is why Chaucer says, How did your modern translation translate that, Chanti?

And so Chaucer's using this word prick.