At the end of the poem is, from the same hand,
Thus, countrymen kinde, I pray let me finde, For this merry glee, No hard censure to be. King Henry the Eight Had a good conceit Of my merry vaine, Though duncicall plaine It now nothing fits The time’s nimble wits: My lawrell and I Are both wither’d dry, And you flourish greene In your workes daily seene, That come from the presse, Well writ I confesse; But time will devouer Your poets as our, And make them as dull As my empty scull.”
[271] _Skelton’s Ghost to the Reader_, &c. I give these lines from the _Harl. Miscel._, the copy of Rand’s ed. which was lent to me by Mr. Heber, wanting the last leaf.]
Concerning Elynour Rummyng and the poem by which Skelton has rendered her famous, Dallaway has the following remarks,—_his account of the circumstances which introduced Skelton to her acquaintance being a mere hypothesis!!_ “When the Court of Henry viii was frequently kept at the palace of Nonsuch (about six miles distant), the laureate, with other courtiers, sometimes came to Leatherhead for the amusement of fishing, in the river Mole; and were made welcome at the _cabaret_ of Elinor Rummyng, whom Skelton celebrated in an equivocal encomium, in a short [?—it consists of 623 lines—] poem, remarkable only for a very coarse jest, after a manner peculiar to the author and the times in which he lived, but which has been more frequently reprinted than his other works. The gist or point of this satire had a noble origin, or there must be an extraordinary coincidence of thought in the _Beoni_, or Topers, a ludicrous effusion of the great Lorenzo de Medici, when a young man.... Her domicile, near the bridge, still exists. The annexed etching was made from a drawing taken previously to late repairs, but it still retains its first distinction as an ale-house.”
“Some of her descendants occur in the parish register in the early part of the last century.” _Letheræum_, 1821, pp. 4-6.
_The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng_] Besides “I _Tonne_ ale or wyne I put lycour in to tonnes, _Je entöne_,” Palsgrave has “I _Tonne_ I masshe ale, _Je brasse_.... Whan _tonne_ you and god wyll: _Quant brasserez vous_,” &c. _Lesclar. de la Lang. Fr._, 1530. fol. ccclxxxxi. (Table of Verbes); and here _Tunnyng_ means—Brewing.