Flyting orfliting (Classical Gaelic:immarbág,Irish:iomarbháigh,lit. "counter-boasting"),[3] is a contest consisting of the exchange of insults between two parties, often conducted in verse.[4]
The wordflyting comes from theOld English verbflītan meaning 'to quarrel', made into agerund with the suffix -ing. Attested from around 1200 in the general sense of a verbal quarrel, it is first found as a technical literary term in Scotland in the sixteenth century.[5] The first writtenScots example[6] isWilliam Dunbar,The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie, written in the late fifteenth century.[7]
I will no longer keep it secret:
it was with thy sister
thou hadst such a son
hardly worse than thyself.
Like ane boisteous bull, ye rin and ryde
Royatouslie, lyke ane rude rubatour
Ay fukkand lyke ane furious fornicatour
Ajax: Thou bitch-wolf's son, canst thou not hear? Feel then.
Thersites: The plague of Greece upon thee, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!
Flyting is a ritual, poetic exchange of insults practiced mainly between the 5th and 16th centuries. Examples of flyting are found throughoutScots,Ancient,Medieval[8][9] andModernCeltic,Old English,Middle English and Norse literature involving both historical and mythological figures. The exchanges would become extremely provocative, often involving accusations ofcowardice orsexual perversion.
Norse literature contains stories of the gods flyting. For example, inLokasenna the godLoki insults the other gods in the hall ofÆgir. In the poemHárbarðsljóð, Hárbarðr (generally considered to beOdin in disguise) engages in flyting withThor.[10]
In the confrontation ofBeowulf andUnferð in the poemBeowulf, flytings were used as either a prelude to battle or as a form of combat in their own right.[11]
InAnglo-Saxon England, flyting would take place in a feasting hall. The winner would be decided by the reactions of those watching the exchange. The winner would drink a large cup of beer ormead in victory, then invite the loser to drink as well.[12]
The 13th-century poemThe Owl and the Nightingale andGeoffrey Chaucer'sParlement of Foules contain elements of flyting.
Flyting became public entertainment inScotland in the 15th and 16th centuries, whenmakars would engage in verbal contests of provocative, often sexual andscatological but highly poetic abuse. Flyting was permitted despite the fact that the penalty for profanities in public was a fine of 20 shillings (over £300 in 2025 prices) for a lord, or a whipping for a servant.[13]James IV andJames V encouraged "court flyting" between poets for their entertainment and occasionally engaged with them.The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie records a contest betweenWilliam Dunbar andWalter Kennedy in front of James IV, which includes the earliest recorded use of the wordshit as a personal insult.[13] In 1536 the poetSir David Lyndsay composed aribald 60-line flyte to James V after the King demanded a response to a flyte.
Flytings appear in several ofWilliam Shakespeare's plays.Margaret Galway analysed 13 comic flytings and several other ritual exchanges in the tragedies.[14] Flytings also appear in Nicholas Udall'sRalph Roister Doister and John Still'sGammer Gurton's Needle from the same era.
While flyting died out in Scottish writing after the Middle Ages, it continued for writers of Celtic background.Robert Burns parodied flyting in his poem, "To a Louse", andJames Joyce's poem "The Holy Office" is a curse upon society by a bard.[15] Joyce played with the traditional two-character exchange by making one of the characters representing society as a whole.
Hilary Mackie has detected in theIliad a consistent differentiation between representations in Greek of Achaean and Trojan speech,[16] where Achaeans repeatedly engage in public, ritualized abuse: "Achaeans are proficient at blame, while Trojans perform praise poetry."[17]
Taunting songs are present in theInuit culture, among many others. Flyting can also be found inArabic poetry in a popular form callednaqā’iḍ, as well as the competitive verses of JapaneseHaikai.
Echoes of the genre continue into modern poetry.Hugh MacDiarmid's poemA Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, for example, has many passages of flyting in which the poet's opponent is, in effect, the rest of humanity.
Flyting is similar in both form and function to the modern practice offreestyle battles between rappers and the historic practice ofthe Dozens, a verbal-combat game representing a synthesis of flyting and itsEarly Modern English descendants with comparable African verbal-combat games such asIkocha Nkocha.[18]
In the Finnish epicKalevala, the heroVäinämöinen uses the similar practice ofkilpalaulanta (duel singing) to defeat his opponentJoukahainen.
Professor Ferenc Szasz argued that so-calledrap battles, where two or more performers trade elaborate insults, derive from the ancient Caledonian art of "flyting." According to the theory, Scottish slave owners took the tradition with them to the United States, where it was adopted and developed by slaves, emerging many years later as rap; see also John Dollard, "The Dozens: the dialect of insult",American Image1 (1939), pp. 3–24; Roger D. Abrahams, "Playing the dozens",Journal of American Folklore75 (1962), pp. 209–18.
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