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 Swan. It was a famous house in the seventeenth century, and cooked the Mole trout as well as the Dorking inns cooked their water-souchy of carp and tench. The Reverend S.N. Sedgwick, in his ingenious little collection of Leatherhead legends, adds a strange record to the inn property. He founds one of his stories on a local tradition that the carrying of a dead body can establish a right of way, and he says that in quite recent times the sum of one penny has been charged for permission to bring a corpse through the Swan Brewery Yard, to prevent a right of way being established.