If I am discussing the topic of fowl today, I will feel perfectly comfortable mentioning cock, a/k/a male chicken. Although granted, I would more naturally gravitate toward the term "rooster".
I have absolutely no problem with older works using words whose meanings have changed -- a reader
should be able to understand, when they are reading about older times, that an older version of the language is likely to be used.
That being said, I also have absolutely no problem with modernized texts. I don't really view that as bowdlerization, since the meaning isn't being changed. It is a translation from Ye Olde Englishe to Ye Newe Englishe.
