re in all her journey more fascinating than where she divides her
stream under Leatherhead, and comes dancing down by separate channels to
her broad sheet of ripples at the bridge.

Beyond the bridge on the left, is the site of a very famous old inn. The
present inn, the Running Horse, has been partly rebuilt, and has few
external attractions, but the mistress of the old inn, four hundred
years ago, was the subject of an ode written by the Poet Laureate. She
was Elinour Rumming, ale-wife of a cabaret at "Lederhede in Sothray,"
and John Skelton, perhaps to amuse Henry VIII, and perhaps to please
himself, wrote one of his pungent, tumbling romps of doggerel about her.
"The Tunning of Elinour Rumming, per Skelton Laureate," as one of the
old editions prints it, is an interminable piece of rhyme, mostly an
orgy of coarseness, but with a certain rude vigour of humour and live
truth. Here are a score of lines out of some hundreds:--

THE TUNNYNG OF ELINOUR RUMMING, PER SKELTON LAUREATE.

"Tell you I chill
If that ye wyll
A while be still
Of a comelye gyll
That dwelt on a hyll
But she is not gryll
For she is somewhat sage
And well worne in age
For her visage
It would asswage
A mannes courage.

And this comely dame
I understande her name
Is Elinoure Rumminge
At home in her wonnyng
And as men say
She dwelt in Sothray
In a certain stede
By syde Lederhede
She is a tonnish gyb
The deuell and she be sib
But to take up my tale
She breweth noppy ale

And maketh thereof poorte sale
To travellers, to tinkers
To sweters, to swinkers
And all good ale drynkers
That will nothinge spare
But dryncke till they stare
And bringe them selfe bare
With now away the mare
And let us sley care
As wise as an hare."

The legend is that Skelton was a fisherman, and used to come over from
Nonsuch Palace by Epsom to fish in the Mole. Perhaps he did, and drank
Elinour's "noppy ale"; in any case, a portrait of the Leatherhead
ale-wife found its way into one of his books, with a rhymed couplet
beneath it:--

"When Skelton wore the Laurell Crowne
My Ale put all the Ale Wives downe."

The portrait is of a hag of such appalling ill-favour as would certainly
"asswage a manne's courage."

An inn of more interest, though never the subject of a Laureate's ode,
is the old coaching hostel, the Swa