NEEDLING

Last night, I was trying to read Chaucer in the original.
Haven’t read him since I was forced to read him in high school, though back then we read him in the modern English translation.
Never figured it’d be this hard.
Had to read out loud, looking at annotations, references, and word descriptions as I did so.
Got through the introduction and four pages of “The Miller’s Prologue and Tale.”
Read those pages three times.
Some pretty sexy hot stuff, if you ask me, and where was I in high school, I should have been ecstatic we were not only asked, but forced to read such racy material.
Maybe it was not only the modern English translation, but also the abridged version... or shall we say edited, censored, revised, and reformulated for young innocent hearts and minds.
Or maybe I was just dumb and couldn’t understand a word I read.
Not that I’m understanding a whole lot more now fifteen years later.
These make Robert Browning’s stuff look easy.

Lines 173 – 178, for example:

And prively he caughte hire by the queynte,
And seyde, “Y-wis, but if ich have my wille,
For derne love of thee, lemman, I spille,”
And heeld hire harde by the haunche-bones,
And seyde, “Lemman, love me al atones,
Or I wol dyen, also God me save!”

(Wow, writing it down helps a lot... I might should copy the whole poem down after I get through reading it a couple of times?)