By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘I Have a Gentle Cock’ dates from the Middle Ages – probably the fourteenth century – as the Middle English spelling (reproduced in the original below) suggests. And yes, there is a bawdy double entendre going on in the title of this short medieval lyric: ‘cock’ is not just a cockerel, one suspects, especially as it appears, suggestively, in the ‘lady’s chamber’ at the end of the poem…
I Have a Gentle Cock
I haue a gentil cook,
Crowyt me day.
He doth me rysyn erly,
My matyins for to say.