Flytings

Oswald: What dost thou know me for?

Kent: A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-liver’d, action-taking, whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch.

Shakespeare: King Lear (Act 2, Scene 2)

A flyting is a type of vitriolic contest in which insults are traded between antagonists. Flytings were a staple of ancient Germanic poetry and feature in Old Norse, Old English and Scots literature. The word flyting is derived from Old English flitan ‘to contend, strive, wrangle, dispute’. Flytings tended to be extremely abusive, often containing scatological invective – the contestants were shit-stirrers par excellence after all – and typically involved accusations of sexual perversion and cowardice. In Anglo-Saxon England, flytings would take place in a mead hall, with poets competing to give the best insults. Those watching the exchange would decide on the winner, who would then be awarded a large cup of mead or beer and be expected to invite the loser to drink as well, which sounds a bit awkward. In Anglo-Saxon poetry, flytings were frequently a precursor to battle. For example, in Beowulf, prior to the protagonist’s battle with the monster Grendel, the character Unferð questions Beowulf’s judgement, calling him impetuous and rash for having a rowing contest with his rival Breca across a sea strait in winter swells, purely ‘for dolgilpe’, i.e., vainglory. Beowulf retorts that he demonstrated his courage in the hardships he suffered at sea and slew nine nicors, sea monsters, and that Unferð is drunk on beer. He adds that Grendel would not have been such a scourge of the Danes if Unferð’s boldness in battle matched his eagerness to boast.

The Norse myths have some of the greatest flytings, and the poem Lokasenna ‘Loki’s flyting’ represents its apogee, as the god Loki manages to slag off the vast majority of the other gods in the Norse pantheon in one fell swoop. The setting for Lokasenna is a feast at the halls of Ægir, the personification of the sea in Norse mythology, who prepares ale for the gods in his enormous cauldron. Loki is first irked by the praise being heaped on Ægir’s servants Fimafeng and Eldir for their skilled service, so he kills Fimafeng out of spite and is chased from Ægir’s halls. Loki soon returns, though, and reminds the gods that the rules of hospitality dictate that he should be granted ale and a seat at the table, notwithstanding the fact that he has just murdered the silver service. Although he is admitted to the feast, Loki is not mollified and embarks on an extraordinary tirade. Among a host of other taunts, Loki claims that Odin rewards the faint-hearted in battle, Iðunn is the the most ‘man-crazed’ of all women, Frigg took Odin’s brothers into her embrace despite being Odin’s wife, Freyja was caught by the gods astride her twin brother Freyr and then farted, Njörðr once had to endure the ‘daughters of Hymir’ urinating in his mouth and being used as a ‘pisspot’, and the supposedly valiant Thor was spotted cowering in the ‘thumb of a glove’.

Flyting also features in works of literature from the Middle Ages and Early Modern English period. The Owl and the Nightingale, a poem from the 12th or 13th century, is basically a non-stop barrage of insults. In this poem, the birds take turns to abuse and belittle one another. In a vicious tit-for-tat, the nightingale says that the owl has filthy habits and that she often has to stop singing because of the owl’s ugly face.  She mocks the owl’s squat physique, stating that the owl’s head is bigger than the rest of her body put together, derides the owl’s screeching in comparison to her own melodious song and declares that the owl is only useful when she is dead when farmers can use her body as a scarecrow. The owl is initially on the defensive, but soon responds in kind. She retorts that the nightingale’s singing is her only talent and that her song encourages lechery and provokes women to commit adultery. What’s more, the nightingale’s song is only pleasant until she breeds, whereupon she loses her voice and chirps like a titmouse.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, James IV and James V of Scotland encouraged flyting contests between makars, bards, at the Scottish court. One of these, The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie, features some great verbal pyrotechnics and personal invective. Both poets belittle each other’s poetic prowess, ridicule each other’s appearance and let forth some zingers of abuse about each other’s character. To Dunbar, Kennedy is a ‘cuckold’, a ‘cuntbitten, craven coward’, a ‘common thief’ and a ‘doxy’ (whore), while in appearance his skin is ‘hued like a saffron bag’ and he is ‘reisted and cryned’ (withered and shrivelled) ‘as (a) hanged man on a hill’. Furthermore, Dunbar tells Kennedy that he is a ‘skytting skarth’ (shitting monster) with ‘the hurle behind’ (a runny backside) which ‘lets never thy hose go dry’. Dunbar also mocks Kennedy’s ‘Highland strynd’ (Highland tone), suggesting that a Lowland arse would make a better noise. Kennedy gives as good as he gets and calls Dunbar a ‘dreid, dirtfast dearch’ (dreadful, dirty dwarf), who is ‘barefoot, breechless’ and ‘all in duds updost’ (dressed in rags). What’s more, Dunbar is ‘a buggerist abominable’ and a ‘false harlot whoreson’ and a ‘shit but wit’ (a shit without wit). Kennedy also castigates Dunbar’s forebears for their treasonous behaviour in siding with the English against the Scots and says that Dunbar should be exiled there because of this treachery. It makes the Royal Variety Performance seem a little tame.

This ritualised abuse of flyting has echoes in the Dozens, a game common until relatively recently in African-American communities. It consists of two participants insulting each other in front of an audience until one of them gives up. Insults in the Dozens are often directed towards the opponent’s mother and other family members, as well as their personal hygiene, appearance, intelligence, wealth and social status. Taunts regarding the other’s sexual inadequacy or deviancy are also common. The Dozens is seen as the progenitor of freestyle battle rap in which hip-hop artists face off against each other to break down their opponent and prove themselves to be the better rapper. More long term ‘beef’ between hip-hop artists can lead to escalating feuds in which diss tracks with lyrics denigrating the rival rapper are written and insults traded from single to single. I’ll end this blog on flyting with this pithy sentiment courtesy of Jay-Z from his single Takeover, a diss track aimed at bitter rival Nas: ‘I will end it, all that yappin' be finished’.