Thems Flyting Words
Dubious newsflash: Rap Invented by 16th Century Scotsmen. I want to believe.
Summary: Medieval Scotsmen competitively dissed each other in verse, in a manner similar to the freestyle battles of today. This was called flyting. One of the earliest examples of this is The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie (full text here), which is over 600 lines of foul Scottish pentameter. Examples: “Ignorant fule! in to thy mowis and mokis/It may be verifyit that thy wit is thin”, “Cuntbittin crawdoun Kennedy, coward of kynd”, etc.
This professor is claiming that flyting was imported to America by Scottish slave owners, and then was picked up and extended by the slaves. Hmmm. It’s plausible, but the concept of “insulting each other in rhyme” seems like the kind of thing which could easily be independently invented every other fortnight. It seems like the inevitable lovechild of “being drunk and singing” and “being drunk and insulting people”.
Anyway, I don’t actually care that much if it’s true or not. What I do care about is seeing some modern day Scottish flyting throwdowns, in a thick highland accent. With subtitles. C’mon Scotland, do it for me.