SOURCE: Wyrick, Deborah Baker. “Withinne that develes temple: an examination of Skelton's The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng.”The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 10, No. 2 (Fall 1980): 239-54.

[In the following essay, Wyrick finds that The Tunning of Elinour Rumming is not merely a comic, playful work but one that has complex layers of moral and religious meaning.]

Critics are nearly unanimous in their assessment of Skelton's The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng. It is “a picture, a verbal painting—and designedly nothing more”;¹ it offers an “extreme example of a direct, non-intellectualized approach to sordid elements of experience.”² “[C]ompletely unsubtle,”³ the poem can be termed “one of the most monstrous pieces of gross realism in the language.”⁴ An author with “no message, philosophical or moral,”⁵ merely “stimulates our laughter”⁶ by exploiting “a thoroughly native vein of broad comedy.”⁷ Nevertheless, one should be wary about banishing all moral purpose from a work by a cleric-poet who, while exemplifying some humanist talents and ambitions, still holds to late medieval literary forms and voices conservative misgivings over the New Learning and early Renaissance court conventions.⁸ In an attempt, therefore, to probe the complexity of Skelton's thematic construct, this essay will consider Elynour Rummyng according to the threefold Scholastic division of littera, sensus, and sententia, a division with which Skelton was certainly familiar. The prologue will receive special attention since it sets the prosodic, moral, and theological stage for the remainder of the poem.

Including both structure and prosody, the category of littera provides a foundation for an exploration of poetic method. In considering structure, it should be noted at the outset that Elynour Rummyng contains a prologue and seven passi, an arrangement which recalls both Langland's Piers Plowman and Skelton's own The Bowge of Courte. For this arrangement, Skelton has built a framing device in the form of a poetic narrator. Lines 1-5 use the first person to introduce the verse portrait that follows; the narrator is set up as a tale-spinner attempting to entertain a restless audience whom he must admonish to be still (line 3; the audience's wandering attention is referred to again in line 56).⁹ In the prologue, then, the narrator and his listeners occupy a poetic locus removed in space and time from Elynour's inn in Sothray. Although the narrator occasionally inserts asides and transitions (see particularly the ends of the first, second, and third passi) in order to sustain the unifying tone provided by his voice, he does not reemerge substantially until the end of the seventh passus. In contrast to the uncertainty expressed early in the poem over secondhand information (92-96), lines 592-94 reveal that the narrator has been an eye-witness to the debauchery at Elynour's tavern, a revelation that enhances the verisimilitude of the poetic ‘reality.’ Then, in lines 616-21, the narrator withdraws from the alehouse scene and, ultimately, from the poem. He breaks the poem with a curse (617), complains of physical discomfort (618), disparages his artistic efforts (619-21), and signs off (622-23).

Within the frame stirs the chaotic world of Elynour and her clients. Although it is difficult to discern a rational narrative structure in the poem, there is a progression of effects which can be understood in terms of visual montages rather than in terms of chronological or dramatic sequence. The prologue presents a comic, even cruel, blazon of the heroine. In general, the description moves from her face to her body to her clothes, investing each microscopic observation with a Boschian tactilism that laces the sense of humor with a sense of horror. Unnamed yet omnipresent, the character towers like a Brobdingnagian apparition, dominating nearly one hundred lines of Skeltonic hyperbole. Her physiognomy and apparel take the place of the conventional seasonal settings and influential astrological powers which open a traditional medieval allegory.¹⁰ Her countenance transforms man's spirits (9-11); she provides her own rainy and dreary weather (see 13, 24, 36-37) for the shriveled landscape (see 60-63) which surrounds her. Finally, Skelton sets the poetic mechanism in motion by allowing her to hobble out into action.

At the beginning of the Primus Passus, the heroine is named and localized (91-98). Most important, her occupation as ale mistress is established (102-6), and a tableau of her tavern is presented through a sketch of the parade of female rogues who scramble to the inn beside Lederhede. The Secundus Passus shoots back in to a tripartite close-up of Elynour. First, her irascible character is exposed as she ill-naturedly demands payment and tries to clear the premises of barnyard hogs and human swine. Second, her unusual and unsanitary process of ale making is painstakingly depicted. Third, she is allowed her longest speech, a monologue extolling the lascivious effect of her liquor. The narrative point of view retreats in the Tertius Passus in order to pan the crowd of customers laden with money and barter hastening to the tavern from all directions. The ladies squeeze in, sit down, and cry for ale (see lines 288, 301-3). The narrative structure of the first half of the poem, therefore, has been one of centripetal progress in which the figure of Elynour, through poetic concentration, has been charged with enough magnetic force to attract a ‘full house.’

The Quartus Passus shifts optical and dramatic perspective. It not only spreads its attention to specific denizens of the inn, it also presents dramatic dialogue.¹¹ Like the Quartus Passus, the Quintus Passus begins with a panoramic survey of the alehouse rabble which dissolves into individualized portraits.¹² The passus, however, is interrupted by an anaphoristic passage which diffuses the intensity of the separate “characters.” In similar fashion, the Sextus Passus starts with graphically conceived portrayals of Maude Ruggy and the old rybybe, who has a dramatic run-in with Elynour and a duck. This passage also illustrates the structural use of animal imagery in the poem. Although animal references are put to different uses,¹³ their sheer profusion and variety lend a tonal unity to Elynour Rummyng which pulls together disparate events and characters jostling for the reader's attention. The last twenty-six lines of the Sextus Passus, however, are drawn back in order to provide an overview of the teeming tavern; they rely on paralleled lists of ale offerings. By this point in the poem, the cataloguing long shot has lost its effectiveness. The shaky narrative structure of the first half has fragmented completely; disembodied dramatic incident now alternates with static descriptive tallies.

Most of the Septimus Passus, however, exhibits a cohesive structure. The grossly incontinent Sybbyll is compared with the fastidious pryckemedenty, a juxtaposition notable for its ethical as well as for its physical contrast. The poem ends with an anticlimactic evocation of the sad souls who mark token IOU's for their bar bills. All dramatic progress has ceased, and the narrator ends his account. The saga of Elynour has not finished; one surmises that these activities will drag into eternity. It is merely the relating of the story that has stopped. This sudden halt truncates the poem before a logical closure can be worked out.

Elynour Rummyng, then, is separated into two distinct parts. The first half (prologue through Tertius Passus) concentrates on Elynour, on her character and activities, and on her gathering-in of clients. The second half (Quartus through Septimus Passus) focuses on her dissolute clientele singly and in groups. Although the halves complement each other in a situational sense, they do not work together to fashion a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Dramatic action does exist in the waves of movement towards the inn, in the verbal altercations of the women, in the descriptive juxtaposition of character portraits, in the abrupt shifts of narrative perspective, and even in the darting insertions of the direct narrative voice. Nevertheless, the overall effect is disjointed. Instead of a unified narrative process, the poem presents a tumultuous montage of portraits and snippets of activity arrayed around the protean figure of Elynour. Elynour Rummyng, then, is an experiential event, not an organically realized structure. By hurling the reader inside and outside the tavern, by thrusting him face-to-face with the alewives and then pulling him away, by swiveling his attention from Elynour to her followers, and by bombarding him with discrete descriptions of objects and actions, the poem raises a pattern in the reader's mind of disintegrated, swirling, spontaneous life.

One can discover the same effect in the prosodic aspect of the poem's littera. Of course, the notorious Skeltonic meter is the most distinctive prosodic feature of Elynour Rummyng.¹⁴ The Skeltonic, composed of two- or three-beat lines rhymed sequentially in varying groups, is quick-paced and fluid; it catches the reader in a tide of tumbling images and phrases. The occasional use of alliteration (e.g. lines 12-15, 19, 136-37, 140, 222, 462, 516), of assonance (e.g. 148, 469), of internal and near rhymes (e.g. “with a whym wham / Knyt with a trym tram,” 75-76; “cawry mawry,” 150), and of anaphora (e.g. 437-44)¹⁵ also contributes to the swift current of the verse. Further, the variety of stress and of groups of rhyming end-words creates a prosodic atmosphere of spontaneity that mirrors both the dramatic framework of narrator and audience and the existential totality of the poem. Just as a storytelling session and a tavern revel are ‘events,’ the unfettered Skeltonic is also an ‘event’—one which anticipates stream-of-consciousness versifying. A reader can enjoy the illusion of being in on the creation, of sharing in the free aural association that frequently gives the impression of sequence being formed by rhyme availability rather than by ‘logical’ developmental order.¹⁶ In addition, the very shortness of the lines contributes to the jerky immediacy of the poem. The accretions of parallel noun and adjectival phrases propel the reader forward into direct poetic experience; just as man's raw sense impressions must be filtered and fashioned by the brain into finished mental products, Skelton's floating lines must be integrated within the reader's consciousness into a comprehensible picture of the tavern scene.

What, in fact, is the picture? Most commentators, as stated above, believe Elynour Rummyng to be no more than a low-life genre portrait. Nevertheless, if one attempts to identify Skelton's aims, one can uncover a more resonant sensus of the poem. First, the author's own Latin tag presents a moralizing message.¹⁷ He envisions his “little book” as a moral mirror in which drunken, sordid women can see themselves; by implication, the reflected truth should cause a change in their modes of behavior. Elynour and her friends embody one of the two antithetical stereotypes in the traditional querelle des femmes. In opposition to ethereal, virtuous, pious women of whom the paragon is the Virgin Mary, the alehouse crowd exemplifies sensual, degenerate, profane harridans of whom the prototype is the fallen Eve. Second, Skelton deliberately echoes traditional English alewife lore. Not only does he sprinkle coarse proverbial expressions throughout the poem, he parallels the subjects and actions found in contemporary ballads satirizing drunken women. An English ‘carol’ (c. 1503, Balliol College ms.) called “Good gossipes myn” reads in part:

Hoow, gossip myne, gossip myn,
Whan will we go to the wyne?
          …
Call forth owr gossippis by and by,
Elynore, Johan, and Margery,
Margret, Alis, and Cecely,
          For thei will cum,
          Both all and som,
Good gossippis myn-a.
And eche of them will sumwhat bryng,
Gose or pigge or capons wynge,
Pastes of pigynes or sum other thyng.(18)

One is struck both by the general similarity of situation between the carol and Elynour Rummyng and by the specific correspondences between names and objects. As it is difficult to conclude that Skelton did not know this song, or a similar one, he must have utilized this popular tradition in order to underscore the moral sensus of his poem. By exploring the follies of intemperate women, the author was educating as well as entertaining his public. Perhaps the conjectural biographical reference to an Alianora Romyng, a “common Typellar of ale” who was charged in 1525 with selling “at excessive price by small measures,” also underlines the message of the overt sensus.¹⁹ If a contemporary reader had been familiar with the real woman, he should have known that she had been brought to justice, and, therefore, he would have projected a similarly bad end for the poem's protagonist.

According to Skelton's own poetic strategies of appending a moralizing tag and of incorporating snatches of English anti-alewife tradition, Elynour Rummyng's obvious sensus is the exemplification of drunken women for purposes of humor and instruction. Nonetheless, even this straightforward reading has a dark side. In the slippery schemata of late medieval allegorization, the vielle of the querelle des femmes—the unsavory descendant of Eve—was classified within a spectrum of interlocking figures including Eve herself, the female-headed Satanic serpent, Synagoga, and Luxuria. Opposed to her was the virtuous Lady—the devotee of the Virgin—supported by Mary, by the dove of the Annunciation, by Ecclesia, and by Chastitia.²⁰ As Spenser would illustrate at the end of the sixteenth century, the Duessa figure was not merely a foil to the Una image. The bad woman was an active force of evil, capable of bringing ruin and damnation to others. One can see this deepening of moral implication in the visual arts, too. Both Bosch's Bruja and Brueghel's Dulle Griet, attended by humorous folkloric figures and by openly Satanic minions, personify a diabolical tribe of women who have come to terms with the devil.²¹ Ultimately, as the iconography of Synagoga and Ecclesia suggests, the conflict in the querelle des femmes is between faith and heresy, between eternal life and eternal perdition. Even the seemingly harmless anti-feminist carols were considered in the early Renaissance as sinful ingredients of the witches' round dance.²² Elynour's artistic ancestry, then, reverberates with evil.

These sober implications of Skelton's overt sensus lead the reader to the last level of meaning under discussion, the sententia. In order to explore these theological themes, one must return to the prologue to Elynour Rummyng. Its general descriptive approach has been discussed above; a re-examination of poetic method and poetic meaning may prove illuminating. For example, lines 12-21 state:

Her lothely lere
Is nothynge clere,
But vgly of chere,
Droupy and drowsy,
Scuruy and lowsy;
Her face all bowsy,
Comely crynklyd,
Woundersly wrynkled,
Lyke a rost pygges eare,
Brystled wyth here.

The simile (20) and the antitheses (vgly/chere; comely/crynklyd; woundersly/wrynkled) contribute to the nightmarish quality of the verse. The description leaps the bounds of satiric observation into the fastness of prophetic caveat. Can one continue to conceive of this giant grotesque as merely an inflated portrait of a low-life type?

The critic William Nelson believes not. Differing from the bulk of twentieth-century opinion, Nelson hints that Elynour is an exemplum of the end effects of sin, specifically of gluttony. He compares Skelton's lines 12-41, part of which are set forth above, with the following passage from St. Thomas More's The Four Last Things: “If God would never punish gluttony, yet bringeth it punishment enough with itself: it disfigureth the face, discoloureth the skin, and disfashioneth the body; it maketh the skin tawny, the body fat and foggy, the face drowsy, the nose dripping, the mouth spitting, the eyes bleared.”²³ Nelson does not pursue the matter, but his thought-provoking parallel opens the door to the recognition of Elynour Rummyng as a work which incorporates the traditions of the cardinal vices.

Following Nelson's lead, one can argue convincingly for the reading of Elynour Rummyng as a statement on the deadly sin of gluttony. In English tradition, the tavern is the setting in which the sin of gluttony is enacted in order to snare the pilgrim on his journey of life.²⁴ Elynour, as ale mistress, would be a logical personification of this sin of the flesh—an interpretation substantiated by Skelton's descriptive concentration on actual flesh. The physical chord, which the author strikes in the prologue in reference to Elynour (e.g. lines 17-21, 31-33, 40-47), resounds throughout the poem in reference to her companions (e.g. 120-22, 135-41, 421-27, 468-71, 494-97, 552-56). In this connection, it is helpful to recall that the evocation of the paths of sin through physiognomic tracery was a popular method of Christian exposition.²⁵ Further, iconographical attributes of gluttony appear in the prologue and in the passi. Gluttony's best-known symbol, the pig, pokes its way into lines 20, 170-80, 234, 327, 336, 444, and 537.²⁶ General references to surfeit in eating and, particularly, in drinking, permeate the poem; the gross plenitude of food hauled into the tavern is a fitting accompaniment to the cries of “drynke, styll drynke” (305) issuing from women whose paunches are “puffed / And so wyth ale stuffed” (570-71). Finally, the cumulative effect of Skeltonic verse duplicates the idea of ‘piling on’ associated with gluttony.

Yet one is hesitant to restrict the compass of Elynour Rummyng to the sin of gluttony. In the standard Gregorian list of the seven deadly sins, the fleshly trespasses bring up the rear. It is the sin of pride that heads the procession of vices. Is there any evidence that Skelton meant to have Elynour embody pride as well as gluttony?

First, one notes that the last half of the prologue is devoted to a description of Elynour's singular garb, of her “furred flocket … Her huke of Lyncole grene … her gytes / Stytched and pranked with pletes; / Her kyrtle Brystow-red … [her turban] Wrythen in wonder wyse” (53, 56, 68-70, 73). Second, Elynour revels in her showy clothes (51-52, 65, 80-81). These poetic concentrations illuminate Elynour's intimate connection with the sin of pride; by the fifteenth century, pride's most common attribute is the inordinate love of elaborate dress.²⁷ Finally, references to Elynour's pride are woven throughout the entire poem. She praises her ale—and herself—in the Secundus Passus (205-18); at the conclusion of the poem, the pitifully arrogant pryckemedenty acts as a subtly humorous foil to Elynour's robust self-assurance (580-604).

Pride is regarded as the grand marshal of the cardinal vices because it implies an elevation of self over God; only those who value their individualism more than divine will can be trapped by the other deadly sins. Pride, therefore, is identified frequently with heresy.²⁸ In the prologue, one finds allusions to the fact that Elynour is a heretic, perhaps even a witch.²⁹ Visually, she is the archetype of the maleficus; her old, furrowed, hooked-nosed, hairy face frightens men with its “lothely lere” (9-38). In addition, she is “gressed and annoynted” (43) and “smered wyth talowe” (88). Could these details indicate the witch's practice of lathering herself with magic unguent in order to fly to the sabbath?³⁰ It is also noteworthy that “Lyncole green” (56) is associated with the devil and that Gypsy apparel is associated with sorcery (71-79).

What is the thematic function of this cluster of witchcraft associations? One suspects that Elynour is being set up as a heretical celebrant of an inverted religious rite. Elevated above her customers by poetic attention and by physical location (she lives “on a hyll,” lines 5, 114), she is specifically referred to as the devil's sister (100) who brews a vile potion (Secundus Passus) that she offers in blasphemous communion (377) to her fiendish followers (at least one of whom is assumed to be an actual witch, 456-58). They, in turn, bring Mass offerings to her tavern-temple. Some gifts directly represent the rejection of orthodox religion in favor of Elynour's cult. Lines 522-25 relate:

Another brought her garlyke hedes;
Another brought her bedes
Of iet or of cole,
To offer to the ale pole.

The quick switch from homely garlic buds to rosary beads indicates the unadmirable attitude towards religion held by the women. Later, the pryckemedenty, who had been compared through simile to a saint (583), reveals her true colors by giving up her rosary also. Elynour has even entrapped the souls of the outwardly virtuous; the ale mistress—the type of the postlapsarian Eve—has swiped the symbols of earthly communication with the holiest of heavenly women. Can Mary now pray for the sinners at this, the hour of their damnation?

Literary precedent exists for the conjunction of slavery to a deadly sin with inverted religion. Surprisingly, not only pride is heretical, as mentioned above; gluttony also serves as the path to blasphemy. The closest parallel to Elynour Rummyng's depiction of the operation of gluttony on the human spirit is Chaucer's “Pardoner's Tale.” Here, the activities of young tavern habitués are described as follows:

And eten also and drynken over hir myght
Thurgh which they doon the devel sacrifise
Withinne that develes temple, in cursed wise
By superfluytee abhomynable. …(31)

(468-71)

Gluttony has led to at least figurative devil worship, which is cemented by drunken curses dismembering Christ's body (“Pardoner's Tale,” 474-75). Chaucer gives the theological rationale for the seriousness of gluttony a few lines later:

O glotonye, ful of cursednesse!
O cause first of oure confusioun!
O original of oure dampnacioun!

(“Pardoner's Tale,” 498-500)

Gluttony persuaded Eve to try the apple; therefore, gluttony continues to corrupt by substituting material food and drink for the spiritual meal provided by Christ's sacrifice.³² Gluttonous indulgence, then, is per se anti-eucharistic.

Any examination of literary treatments of the seven deadly sins shows that the vices intermingle. Frequently, the sins are distributed under the headings of mundus, caro, and demonia, although sins change alignments from time to time.³³ Chaucer's “Pardoner's Tale” is again a case in point. The indulgent rioters are men:

Whiche been the verray develes officeres
To kyndle and blowe the fyr of lecherye,
That is annexed unto glotonye
          …
… luxurie is in wyn and dronkenesse.

(“Pardoner's Tale,” 480-84)

Similarly, sophisticated allegorical characters do not necessarily exemplify one single vice. Skelton himself has intertwined the branches of the arbor vitia in The Bowge of Courte, where the figure of Riot shows attributes of sloth (Bowge, 324-27), lechery (Bowge, 330-31), and gluttony (Bowge, 342). These ambiguous equations between sin and character extend to Skelton's morality Magnyfycence as well.³⁴

If one considers the impressive precedent afforded by The Canterbury Tales, one is not surprised to find all the seven deadly sins woven throughout the poetic fabric of Elynour Rummyng, although gluttony and pride are the warp and woof of the moralizing pattern. Instances of lechery and sloth, the fleshly concomitants of gluttony, pepper the poem, occurring principally in the descriptions of the lewd dishabille of the tavern crowd (e.g. 133-36, 221-22, 233-34, 496-97). Avarice enters with Elynour's insistence on payment in money or in trade (e.g. 165-66, Tertius Passus). Haltying Jone exemplifies wrath (326-32), as does Elynour on occasion (e.g. 168-86, 503). Envy, since it often manifests itself in rumor-mongers, accompanies “dronken Ales” (351-62); even the damning description of the pryckemedenty stems from the envy felt by the rest of the motley crew. The traps of the world, the flesh, and the devil are snapping in all corners of Elynour's tavern.

Nevertheless, one cannot make a neat assignment of one sin to each of the seven passi; similarly, one cannot maintain that a single character carries the attributes of a specific and exclusive vice. A good case can be made that Elynour carries them all. But even a subsidiary character like Maude Ruggy exhibits interlacing emblems of sin. Lines 468-79 relate:

She was vgly hypped
And vgly thycke lypped,
Lyke an onyon syded,
Lyke tan ledder hyded.
She had her so guyded
Betwene the cup and the wall,
That she was there wythall
Into a palsey fall;
Wyth that her hed shaked,
And her handes quaked;
Ones hed wold haue aked
To se her naked!

Although Maude seems to recall Enuye in Piers Plowman (the character has quaking limbs, is stricken by palsy, and is compared to an onion), she also bears signs of Langland's Coueitise (a character marked by “baberlippes” and leathery cheeks).³⁵ Furthermore, the Essex Cheese which belongs to Langland's Enuye appertains not to Maude Ruggy but to Margery Mylkeducke in Skelton's poem (429). Thus, Skelton has distributed the traditional attributes of the seven deadly sins throughout the poem in order to portray the ubiquitousness of vice.

What, then, can be concluded about the sententious effect of The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng? Skelton has emphasized pride in the prologue in order to establish Elynour as the originator of and focus for evil. As mistress of sinful revels and high priestess of vice, her person and personality compose the stage on which the moralizing tableau is acted out. The tavern setting of the poem is the one most traditionally associated with gluttony. Thus, the numerous iconographical and narrative details suggesting gluttony, details which begin in the prologue and extend throughout the poem, reinforce the view of this sin as the organizing vice in a manner similar to that used by Chaucer in the “Pardoner's Tale” and by Langland in the Fifth Passus of Piers Plowman. Out of gluttony sprout the sins of luxury and sloth; this triad encompasses the carnal sins and, by extension, the threat of temporalia to the spiritual world. Neither does Skelton neglect the other vices. Like victims of a shipwreck, they surface and disappear in the descriptive waves of the poem, reminding the reader that a specific transgression will generate others and will create a domino effect that can send the soul plunging to the depths of damnation. Similarly, the heretical currents in the poem demonstrate that sin is a crime against heaven and its earthly representative, the church, as well as against the individual sinner. Simply stated, to choose sin is to deny God.

This sententia is buttressed by the sensus and by the littera of the poem. The erection of an easily comprehended, vivid, even humorous account of the appearances and consequences of vice is a traditional method of moralization. Hilton employed it in The Scale of Perfection and explained that it is necessary to recognize the image of sin so one can reform oneself to the image of Christ.³⁶ Many critics believe that this was Chaucer's aim in most of the Canterbury Tales.³⁷ In Elynour Rummyng, the sensus—the direct depiction of a negative vision—constructs a pole of morality which implicitly defines its opposite. In similar fashion, Skelton's use of traditional folkloric elements increases the recognition factor of the moral mirror he holds up to the contemporary reader.

The littera also contributes to the final sententious meaning of the poem. The prologue firmly establishes the supernormal presence of the protagonist; thus, the power she exerts over her disciples is grounded in poetic plausibility from the start. Structurally, the amorphous narrative progress, the lack of chronological logic, and the abrupt termination all fix the quality of hopeless timelessness to the reality of sin. The chaotic Skeltonic meter itself suggests disorder and degeneration even as it infuses vitality and immediacy into the poem. It is a brilliant mimetic mode through which to warn a reader who spontaneously follows his passions and rushes after earthly pleasures. Further, the animal imagery permeating the poem acts as a reminder of the brute nature of man when he disregards the gifts of reason and faith. The various types of repeated rhetorical patterns and the cascades of rhyme imitate temptation's relentless assault against Man. Even the poetic narrator can be recognized as a moral arbiter of sorts. He demands attention from his audience because his message is crucial as well as amusing; he ends his account with an explicit condemnation of the tavern scene and perhaps with a hint of humilitas, the antidote to the root vice of pride which has spawned such perditious progeny.

This interpretation of The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng is not intended to diminish one's enjoyment of Skelton's magnificent powers of comic description or of his ingenious prosodic playfulness. It is intended, however, to allow a reader to increase his appreciation of this idiosyncratic tour de force by placing it in a multilayered moral and religious context. The disparity between the implicit virtuous standards and the explicit amoral actions and attitudes displayed in the poem should enhance, rather than dilute, the pungency of Elynour Rummyng. At the least, this study may provide a fresh insight into the thematic richness of a poem usually dismissed as a squalid, even if entertaining, genre portrait that epitomizes Skelton at his most ‘beastly.’

Notes

1. Stanley Eugene Fish, John Skelton's Poetry (New Haven, 1965), p. 251.

2. Alan Swallow, “John Skelton: The Structure of the Poem,” Philological Quarterly, 328 (1953), 36.

3. L. J. Lloyd, John Skelton: A Sketch of His Life and Writings (rpt., New York, 1969), p. 60.

4. Maurice Evans, English Poetry in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1955), p. 57.

5. W. H. Auden, “John Skelton,” in The Great Tudors, ed. Katharine Garvin (New York, 1935), p. 55.

6. A. R. Heiserman, Skelton and Satire (Chicago, 1961), p. 297.

7. H. L. R. Edwards, Skelton: The Life and Times of an Early Tudor Poet (Freeport, N.Y., 1971), p. 121.

8. There is a controversy over whether Skelton belongs to the waning Middle Ages or to the waxing Renaissance; most authors are satisfied to see him as a transitional poet. See, for example, Heiserman, p. 13. John M. Berdan, in Early Tudor Poetry: 1485-1547 (New York, 1920), p. 120, points out examples of Skelton's conflicting traits. He cites medieval form (The Bowge of Courte), humanistic knowledge (Speke Parrot), Scholastic Latin influence (Phyllyp Sparowe), and Renaissance individualism (Elynour Rummyng). A third force found in Skelton's poetry is that of popular tradition, manifested in the poet's use of colloquial and proverbial idioms. See Evans, pp. 51-52.

9. The version of the poem referred to in this article will be Alexander Dyce, The Poetical Works of Skelton and Donne (Cambridge, Mass., 1855), I, 109-31. One critic discerns three narrative roles in the poem—those of minstrel, of letter-writer, and of director of mumming. See Robert S. Kinsman, ed., John Skelton: Poems (Oxford, 1969), p. xiii. It seems, however, that the dominant voice is that of ‘minstrel,’ or storyteller. The other two roles are extrapolations from the final lines of the poem, yet they do not evidence themselves in the bulk of the work.

10. The landscape setting and the presence of Luna in the prologue of Skelton's The Bowge of Courte show that Skelton was intimately conversant with these medieval conventions.

11. The notable characters in the Quartus Passus are haltyng Jone, dronken Ales, and the bacon bringer. Jone and the bacon bringer quarrel over the latter's heartburn, with Elynour acting as the heavy-handed peacemaker; Ales enters and harangues her companions with rambling gossip. This method of characterization through monologue or dialogue is characteristic of Skelton. See The Bowge of Courte and Phyllyp Sparowe.

12. One is particularly aware of the “genet,” of the dame who replaces a bottle stopper with a piece of shoe sole, of mad Kyt, of Margery Mylkeducke, and of the charm-maker. This arrangement of characters presents an interesting progression from animal imagery to witchcraft.

13. Animals are objects treated as goods, like thread and crockery (e.g. line 538), as participants in dramatic actions (e.g. 505-7), as ingredients in proverbial expressions (e.g. 234, 306), as descriptive figures of speech (e.g. 50, 519-21), and as analogies to states of man (e.g. 169-72, 330, 388-89).

14. One critic, in an attempt to uphold Skelton's mastery of metrical regularity, maintains that the poem must be read aloud in order to perceive the two- and threebeat norm of the Skeltonic line. See Elaine Spina, “Skeltonic Meter in Elynour Rummyng,” Studies in Philology, 64 (1967), 665-73. Be that as it may, it seems that the Skeltonic is enhanced by the tensile strength of its varied short rhythms.

15. For Skelton's use of rhetorical figures, including but not limited to anaphora, see Vère L. Rubel, Poetic Diction in the English Renaissance: From Skelton Through Spenser, The Modern Language Association of America Revolving Fund Series, 12 (rpt., New York, 1966), pp. 23-37.

16. For example, in lines 31-33, “skynne lose and slacke” naturally melts into the observation that it is “[g]rained lyke a sacke.” Nevertheless, the following line, “[w]ith a croked backe,” appears to occur simply for the sake of rhyme, since it shifts the focus from the face, the subject of the flanking lines.

17. The tag is in two parts. As quoted in Dyce, p. 131, it reads: “Omnes foeminas, quae vel nimis bibulae sunt, vel quae sordida labe squaloris, aut qua spurca foeditatis macula, aut verbosa loquacitate notantur, poeta invitat ad audiendum hunc libellum.” (“The poet invites all women, either those who are excessively drunk, or those who are dirtied with the stain of squalor, or defiled and spotted by foulness, or else known for wordy talkativeness, to harken unto this little book.”) The quatrain is:

    Ebria, squalida, sordida foemina, prodiga verbis,
    Huc currat, properet, veniat! Sua gesta libellus
    Iste volutabit: Paean sua plectra sonando
    Materiam risus cantabit carmine rauco.

    (“Drunk, squalid, sordid, garrulous woman / Run, hurry, come to this place! This little book / Will consider your action: Your hymn striking the lyre [of poetry] / Will sing of laughing matter in harsh incantations.”)

    Edwards, pp. 116-17, reads the poem as a variation on the traditional querelle des femmes; he, like Gordon (p. 74), sees Elynour as the antithesis of Jane Scrope in Phyllyp Sparowe, the two women representing the opposing medieval female stereotypes. The specific contrast between the heels belonging to the two women is commented upon by H. A. Mason, Humanism and Poetry in the Early Tudor Period (New York, 1959), p. 189.

18. Carol No. 86 in Richard Leighton Greene, ed., A Selection of English Carols Oxford, 1962), pp. 148-53.

19. Kinsman, p. xii and p. 154.

20. See, for example, an illuminated initial from the end of the fifteenth century depicting the ‘living cross’ which has all these iconographical elements arranged in thematic opposition on either side of the crucified Christ. Bernhard Blumenkranz, Le Juif médiéval au miroir de l'art chrétien (Paris, 1966), p. 109.

21. Valentin Denis, ed., trans. Paul Colacicchi, All the Paintings of Pieter Bruegel (New York, 1961), p. 17. See also R. L. McGrath, “Satan and Bosch: the Visio Tundali and the Monastic Vices,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 56 (1968), 45-50.

22. Greene, p. 17. It might also be noted that these carols exhibit short metrical lines, variable rhyme groups, and macaronics. Although Skelton could have gotten hints for the Skeltonic from the carols, they could both share the same source—perhaps the Latin cantilena.

23. William Nelson, John Skelton, Laureate, Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature, 139 (New York, 1939), p. 51. One is also reminded of the grim details of Skelton's own “Vponn a Deedmans Hed.” One of the examples of medieval poems on the signs of death given by Kinsman to support his thesis on the origin of the Skeltonic also parallels the descriptive process in Elynour Rummyng: “Wanne mine eyhnen misten, / and mine heren sissen, / and mi nose koldet, / and mi muþ grennet … al to late, al to late, / Wanne þe bere ys ate gate.” Robert S. Kinsman, “Skelton's ‘Vppon a Deedman's Hed’: New Light on the Origin of the Skeltonic,” Studies in Philology, 50 (1953), 107. Could Elynour Rummyng, then, be a raucous memento mori?

24. English literature's most famous instance of this is the tavern/gluttony episode in Passus V of Piers Plowman. Morton W. Bloomfield, in his valuable book The Seven Deadly Sins (Lansing, Mich., 1967), lists tavern/gluttony scenes in fourteenth-century homiletic tracts, in the influential Ayenbite of Inwyt, and in the religious encyclopedia Jacob's Well. He also describes a mural in an Essex church (c. 1400) in which Gluttony is represented by a tavern gathering. See pp. 126, 162, 183, 199, 209, and 223.

25. The effects of sin were thought to be readable, outwardly visible signs of inward spiritual disgrace. See the More passage quoted above and St. Bonaventure on the appearance of the idle person (slack-skinned, drowsy-lidded, dissolute) as referred to in Siegfried Wenzel, The Sin of Sloth: Acedia in Medieval Thought and Literature (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1967), p. 177.

26. This tradition can, perhaps, be traced to the story of casting demons into swine in Matthew 7:28. Pigs as symbols of gluttony can be found in the Ancren Riwle, in the Ayenbite of Inwit, in Jacob's Well, and in The Faerie Queene. See Bloomfield, p. 248. Pigs have also stood for lechery and for sloth. This fluctuating iconography fits well with the flexible disposition of vices in Elynour Rummyng.

27. For example, see John Mirk of Shropshire's sermons (collected in Festial, shortly after 1400) in which the preacher rails against men who have turned “ynto pryde by dyuerse gyses of cloþyng.” Bloomfield, p. 211. See also Kinsman (John Skelton: Poems, p. ix) on the role of clothing in delineating vice in The Bowge of Courte. Langland strikes the same note in the prologue to Piers Plowman: “And somme putten hem to pride, apparailed hem þerafter, / In contenaunce of cloþynge comen d[is]gised.” George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, eds., Piers Plowman: The B Version (London, 1975), p. 228, lines 23-24. Similarly, St. Thomas More asks: “How proude is many a man over his neighbour, because the wull of hys gowne is fyner?” Garry E. Haupt, ed., The Yale Edition of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Vol. 13: Treatise on the Passion, Treatise on the Blessed Body, Instructions and Prayers (New Haven, 1976), p. 8. The Gospel basis for the false pride/false garments analogy seems to be I Cor. 4, which reminds men that our bodies go naked back to God.

28. See Bloomfield, p. 75. See also Joseph E. Milosh, The Scale of Perfection and the English Mystical Tradition (Madison, Wis., 1966), p. 120. After More, in the Treatise cited above, note 27, connects Lucifer with pride, he elaborates on the sin in this manner: “what horrible perill there is in y^e pestilente sinne of pryde, what adhominable sinne it is in the sight of god, when any creature falleth into the delyte and lyking of it self [and it invariably ends with] disobedience and rebellion, the very full forsaking of God.” Haupt, p. 7.

29. As will be shown below, references to all of the seven deadly sins are scattered randomly throughout Elynour Rummyng. In this connection, one can mention that other sins have been linked specifically to witchcraft and idolatry. Robert Grosseteste's important Cursor mundi, for example, maintained that the slothful are prone to practice witchcraft and sorcery. Wenzel, p. 86. Many iconographical attributes of Luxuria and witches (goats, toads, nakedness) are identical. Envy and wrath were motivating forces for witchcraft according to popular literature. The heretical dimension of gluttony will be discussed below. Finally, a Renaissance Christian emblem book identified avarice as the source of all vice and as equatable with heretical idolatry:

    De tout son cœur le veau d'or elle adore
    Ceste affamée & source de tout vice,
    Qui des humains âmes & cœurs, dévore
    Par doux attraits & subtile malice.
    Or qu'idolatrie, au vray, soit avarice
    Saint Paul le dit. …

    (“She worships the golden calf with all her heart / This infamous one and source of all vice, / Who devours human souls and hearts / With sweet attractions and subtle malice. / That idolatry, in truth, be avarice / Saint Paul explains it …”). Emblem 71, “Idolorum Servitas,” in Georgiae Montaneae, Emblemata Christiania (Zurich, 1584), p. 71.

30. A famous witchcraft handbook (1486) describes the method of transportation: “They take the unguent which, as we have said, they make at the devil's instruction … and anoint with it … whereupon they are immediately carried up into the air, either by day or by night, and either visibly or, if they wish, invisibly.” Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Montague Summers (London, 1971), pp. 239-40.

31. Geoffrey Chaucer, “Pardoner's Tale,” in F. N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Boston, 1961), pp. 150-55.

32. See D. W. Robertson, Jr., and Bernard F. Huppé, Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition (Princeton, 1951), p. 25.

33. Wenzel, p. 66, explains Sloth's shift from a sin of the devil (acedia as spiritual torpor) to a sin of the flesh (sloth as physical lassitude).

34. Heiserman, pp. 66-125. In general, see William O. Harris, Skelton's Magnyfycence and the Cardinal Virtue Tradition (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1965). Magnyfycence is fortitudo, but he also has attributes of prudentia and justicia. Philosophically, however, he represents temperantia, the measure between extremes after which man should strive. Harris's interpretation of this point is more Scholastic than expressly Aristotelian. See pp. 81 ff.

35. For Enuye, see V, lines 76-85 (Kane and Donaldson, p. 310); for Coueitise, see V, 190-91 (Kane and Donaldson, p. 317).

    One critic has noticed these parallels but uses them to attack Skelton's originality, hypothesizing that Skelton transplanted lines and images from earlier models with abandon. In Elynour Rummyng, “almost everything ‘realistic’ reveals a direct adaptation from Langland.” Norma Phillips, “Observations on the Derivative Method of Skelton's Realism,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 65 (1966), 29. See also Ian A. Gordon, John Skelton: Poet Laureate (Melbourne, 1943), p. 76. One wonders, however, whether this criticism is fair—or even germane. Certainly, originality for originality's sake was not a goal of Renaissance aesthetics. Skelton's novelty appears in his flexible blend of literary and religious tradition with his distinctive verse form, his command of folkloristic elements, and his sizable gift for sense description. The borrowings add to, rather than subtract from, his poetic richness.

36. Milosh, p. 41.

37. See D. W. Robertson, Jr., A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton, 1967).