Editing Flyting (section)

== Similar practices ==
Hilary Mackie has detected in the ''[[Iliad]]'' a consistent differentiation between representations in Greek of Achaean and Trojan speech,<ref>{{cite book |last=Mackie |first=Hilary Susan |title=Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad |publisher=Rowmann & Littlefield |year=1996 |location=Lanham MD |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A3F_so8HNg4C |isbn=0-8476-8254-4}}, reviewed by Joshua T. Katz in ''Language'' '''74'''.2 (1998) pp. 408–09.</ref> where Achaeans repeatedly engage in public, ritualized abuse: "Achaeans are proficient at blame, while Trojans perform praise poetry."<ref>Mackie 1996:83.</ref>

Taunting songs are present in the [[Inuit]] culture, among many others. Flyting can also be found in [[Arabic poetry]] in a popular form called ''naqā’iḍ'', as well as the competitive verses of Japanese [[Haikai]].

Echoes of the genre continue into modern poetry. [[Hugh MacDiarmid]]'s poem ''[[A 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 of [[freestyle battle]]s between rappers and the historic practice of [[the Dozens]], a verbal-combat game representing a synthesis of flyting and its [[Early Modern English]] descendants with comparable African verbal-combat games such as ''Ikocha Nkocha''.<ref name="rap">{{cite web |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/3998862/Rap-music-originated-in-medieval-Scottish-pubs-claims-American-professor.html |title=Rap music originated in medieval Scottish pubs, claims American professor |access-date=2008-12-30 |last=Johnson |first=Simon |work=telegraph.co.uk |publisher=Telegraph Media Group |date=2008-12-28 |quote=Professor Ferenc Szasz argued that so-called [[rap 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 Image'' '''1''' (1939), pp. 3–24; Roger D. Abrahams, "Playing the dozens", ''Journal of American Folklore'' '''75''' (1962), pp. 209–18.}}</ref>

In the Finnish epic ''[[Kalevala]]'', the hero [[Väinämöinen]] uses the similar practice of ''kilpalaulanta'' (duel singing) to defeat his opponent [[Joukahainen]].