A hundred and fifty years later than _Piers Plowman_ we get another picture of an English ale-house, by no less celebrated a poet. This famous house, the "Running Horse," still stands at Leatherhead, in Surrey, beside the long, many-arched bridge that there crosses the river Mole at one of its most picturesque reaches. It was kept in the time of Henry the Seventh by that very objectionable landlady, Elynor Rummyng, whose peculiarities are the subject of a laureate's verse. Elynor Rummyng, and John Skelton, the poet-laureate who hymned her person, her beer, and her customers, both flourished in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Skelton, whose genius was wholly satiric, no doubt, in his _Tunning_ (that is to say, the brewing) of _Elynor Rummyng_, emphasised all her bad points, for it is hardly credible that even the rustics of the Middle Ages would have rushed so enthusiastically for her ale if it had been brewed in the way he describes.
His long, rambling jingles, done in grievous spelling, picture her as a very ugly and filthy old person, with a face sufficiently grotesque to unnerve a strong man:
For her viságe It would aswage A manne's couráge. Her lothely lere Is nothyng clere, But vgly of chere, Droupy and drowsy, Scuruy and lowsy; Her face all bowsy, Comely crynkled, Woundersly wrynkled, Lyke a rost pygges eare Brystled wyth here. Her lewde lyppes twayne, They slauer, men sayne, Lyke a ropy rayne: A glummy glayre: She is vgly fayre: Her nose somdele hoked, And camously croked, Neuer stoppynge, But euer droppynge: Her skin lose and slacke, Grayned like a sacke; Wyth a croked backe. Her eyen jowndy Are full vnsoundy, For they are blered; And she grey-hered: Jawed like a jetty, A man would haue pytty To se how she is gumbed Fyngered and thumbed Gently joynted, Gresed and annoynted Vp to the knockels; The bones of her huckels Lyke as they were with buckles Together made fast; Her youth is farre past. Foted lyke a plane, Legged lyke a crane; And yet she wyll iet Lyke a silly fet.
Her huke of Lincoln grene, It had been hers I wene, More than fourty yere; And so it doth apere. For the grene bare thredes Loke lyke sere wedes, Wyddered lyke hay, The woll worne away: And yet I dare saye She thinketh herselfe gaye.