Did you think Twitter invented people throwing insults at each other in a public space? Well, think again! Back in the olden days, poets would engage in insult rap battles referred to as "flyting." Today, we can find examples of flyting in classical works such as Beowulf and King Lear, but other cultures have their versions as well: the Japanese haikai and the Arabic naqa'id.
The most famous example of poets giving each other lashings in verbal form would probably be "The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie." That medieval rap battle was the first instance a poet used an excrement-related joke and also used the now-ubiquitous curse that starts with an F.
What was the point of these flytings? Not just to flex the poets' rhyming muscles, if you were wondering. Just like diss tracks today, they could make or break them: the poets' image, honor, and social standing depended on their performance. The poets performed the flyting to the royal court, but people outside the court could read their insults and boost their profiles.
Nothing was off-limits during flytings. As Christine M. Robinson writes, Dunbar listed many of Kennedy's defects: "his highland origins, begging, cowardice, treachery, ugly appearance, venereal disease, jaundice, and sexual activity." Well, at least he didn't accuse him of downloading PDF files.
#8 Lake Superior Hasn't Wrecked Anyone Like This Since The Edmund Fitzgerald
Other old insults which might sound like they came straight from a five-year-old's vocabulary, are Gollumpus and Grumbletonian. And no, they don't have anything to do with The Lord of The Rings or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Gollumpus was a "large, clumsy fellow," probably originating from the verb galumph (to move clumsily with a heavy tread). And a Grumbletonian was someone who complained all the time, no matter how good they had it.
Not all Old English insults sounded so nonsensical; some were worded quite normally. Like 'Afternoon Farmer', used to describe lazy people, perhaps because farmers would rise early and grind through the day. If people wanted to call someone emaciated or skinny like a skeleton, they would call them 'Death's Head Upon a Mop Stick.'
But how can we talk about insults without talking about The Bard himself whose put-downs were almost second to none? Truly, who else could come up with quips like "froward and unable worms," "fat guts," "clay-brained guts," "luxurious mountain goat," or "February face"?
