The 15th-century Scottish poets William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy would be rolling in their graves at what the noble art of flyting – trading insults in verse – has been reduced to by the likes of Alan Sugar and Piers Morgan. The pair – who are apparently “frenemies” (as in, “Alan Sugar caught up in new homophobic row after joking with frenemy Piers Morgan about gay elephants”) – began insulting each other on Thursday with Twitter limericks. It isn’t hard to imagine that they were inspired by the efforts of Britain’s new prime minister Boris Johnson, who wrote a limerick about the president of Turkey having sex with a goat three years ago shortly before his appointment as foreign secretary.
Sugar came up with the following: “There was a young fellow called Piers / Who’s been grovelling to leaders for years / When he lost his Trump mojo / He took up with BoJo / And now he is kissing new rears.”
It scans, it rhymes, and it has a kicker of a last line: pretty good.
Morgan’s response? “There was an old growler called Alan, / Whose hypocrisy should merit a ban, / ‘Jail Boris!’ he cried, / But then Al’s integrity died, / And now he’s a lick-spittle Johnson fan.”
I mean, it’s not the worst, but the scansion is miserable and rhyming Alan and “a ban” doesn’t really work. At least we’ve learned, somewhat unexpectedly, that Alan Sugar is a better limerick writer than Piers Morgan.
The glory of the 15th-century insults in The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy is a joy to behold. “Hail, Monsignor! Your balls droop below your dress,” says Dunbar to Kennedy, in Kent Leatham’s translation. “Heretic, lunatic, pickpocket, your fortune is cheated; / Bloody bitch, muddy ditch, quail, cock, or I shall quell you.”
Kennedy’s response? Inimitable. Dunbar is “a crabbed, scabbed, lap-dog for men to strike; / A shit without wit, only cheap tawdry tricks.”
If everyone were forced to turn to poetry to trade insults, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Is it worth a petition? Isn’t everything? While I go and set that up, I leave you with Dunbar’s Trumpishly grandiloquent, but nonetheless glorious, threats about the dangers of his poetry, more than 400 years ago: “When I flyte, some man for shame will sink; / The seas will burn; the moon will be eclipsed; / Rocks will split; the world will lose its grip; / The bells will clang in bitter loud lament.”
