When rutterkyn from borde will ryse
He will piss a galon pott full at twise
And the ouerplus vndir the table of the newe gyse
Like a rutter hoyda.”
Sir John Hawkins printed the above song (with the music) and tells us that it “is supposed to be a satire on those drunken Flemings who came into England with the princess Anne of Cleve, upon her marriage with king Hen. viii.” Hist. of Music, iii. 2. But if it be the very song quoted in our text, it must allude to “rutterkyns” of a considerably earlier period; and, as the Fairfax MS. contains two other pieces which are certainly known to be from Skelton’s pen, there is a probability that this also was composed by him.
Court. Ab. in his next speech but one says, “am not I a ioly rutter?” and (v. 846)
“My robe russheth
So ruttyngly.”
Rutter, which properly means—a rider, a trooper (Germ. reiter, reuter), came to be employed, like its diminutive rutterkin, as a cant term, and with various significations, (see Hormanni Vulgaria, sig. q iii. ed. 1530; Drant’s Horace His Arte of Poetrie, pistles, &c. sig. D ii. ed. 1567). When Court. Ab. asks “am not I a ioly rutter?” he evidently uses the word in the sense of—dashing fellow, gallant, alluding to his dress, on which he afterwards enlarges in a soliloquy. In v. 805 Cr. Con. terms him “this ioly ietter.” Compare the following passage of Medwall’s Interlude of Nature, n. d.;
“And whan he is in suche aray