I was looking at old patches, and came across:
https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994/tickets/98-patch-h-method-is-not-aliased-properly
When I tried to reproduce, I found that the rails version wasn't getting called at all, whether references by "html_escape" or "h".
It looks like when util.rb does -require 'erb'-, erb loads the code in util.rb first, then goes back and overwrites the definition of the method. Probably a side-effect of require-mucking in dependencies.rb, no?
Here's a gist that lays it all out
-Travis