Without venturing an opinion on rhyming “syrup” with “Europe,” I 'll note that at least it avoids the common statistical misstatement I so frequently see…that the Black Death killed “1/3 of Europe’s population.” In fact, it is credited with killing half the population over the course of several years starting in 1347. But about a third died in the first year, and lots of people quote that figure. Either they have trouble grasping the full extent, or maybe they stop reading after a few sentences. At least this song is more accurate about the demographic impact than most commenters.
Also, I believe the well-known lines from the prologue:
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke
refers to a folk-belief of the time that veneration of St. Thomas Becket (whose shrine was at Canterbury Cathedral) had helped England scrape through the recent plague with a comparatively low death toll.
The 1988 film The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (an Australian/New Zealand co-production) directly references both the Black Death and the AIDS crisis.
Starting out in a plague-stricken Cumbrian village in the 14th century, the protagonists dig down and end up in 1980s New Zealand, where the residents are facing fears of a parallel modern-day epidemic.