Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Flyt or Fight

 It turns out to be a little of both flyting and fighting, though in a verbal sense of fight. The saying, "There's nothing new under the sun" meaning what has been done will be done again applies to flyting which was a way to trade insults and wits between the 5th and 16th centuries. So how does it apply to modern times? Rap music, whether the musicians actually know the history of what they are doing has never been mentioned though they definitely didn't invent something new. The following are a couple of examples. 

“Gray-visaged gallows-bird, out of your wits gone wild,

Loathsome and lousy, as wet as a cress,

Since you with worship would so fain be styled,

Hail, Monsignor! Your balls droop below your dress.”


“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a

base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,

hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a

lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,

glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue”




No comments:

Post a Comment