The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng
English poem by John Skelton
The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng is a long raucous, misogynous and libellous poem by English poet John Skelton. The poem concerns a publican who was fined in Leatherhead in 1525 for selling short measures at expensive prices. Her name is recorded as, Eleanor Romyngr or Elynour Rummyng.
The poem was printed by Richard Lant sometime in 1550 and presents what many would consider disgusting images of rural drinking and drunkenness. For all its gritty description, Skelton has modeled the poem on Church liturgy of that time. The verse form itself closely resembles a liturgical chant. The poem is held as an example of misogyny. Women and men brewed ale for sale but it was frequently women who were charged with giving short measure. Elynour's husband was also a brewer but he was not brought to court.
Elynour is a character in the poem who runs a "public house," or pub.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng” is english poem by John Skelton. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tunning, Elynour and Rummyng, not as a finished interpretation.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7770723. VIAF identifies the subject as 178648166. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1525 and 1550.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.