[Page numbers of the printed text appear at the right in bold.]

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Notes 1. See Roger D. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the Streets of Philadelphia (Hatboro, PA, 1964), p. 109; and Ward Parks, Verbal Dueling in Heroic Narrative: The Homeric and Old English Traditions (Princeton, 1990), p. 179.
2. Re Homer, Old French, Irish, and Norse, see Michael Murphy, "Vows, Boasts and Taunts, and the Role of Women in Some Medieval Literature," English Studies 66 (1985), 105-12, at 106-7. On Scottish, see Murphy, "Vows, Boasts and Taunts," p. 106, and Ward Parks, "Flyting, Sounding, Debate: Three Verbal Contest Genres," Poetics Today 7 (1986), 439-58, at 441. On Skelton, see Richard Halpern, The Poetics of Primitive Accumulation: English Renaissance Culture and the Genealogy of Capital (Ithaca, 1991), pp. 103-35. On quatrain saws, see Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle, p. 108, note 11. On the Middle East, see Francelia Clark, "Flyting in Beowulf and Rebuke in The Song of Bagdad: The Question of Theme," Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord, ed. John Miley Foley (Columbus, 1981), pp. 164-93. On seventeenth-century Japan, see Parks, Verbal Dueling, p. 163.
3. Parks, Verbal Dueling, pp. 181, 184.
4. Joseph Bosworth, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (London, 1898), Supplement by T. Northcote Toller (London, 1921), Enlarged Addenda and Corrigenda by Alistair Campbell (Oxford, 1972), s.vv.
5. Parks, Verbal Dueling, p. 179.
6. Ward Parks, "Flyting and Fighting: Pathways in the Realization of the Epic Contest," Neophilologus 70 (1986), 292-306, at 292.
7. Parks, "Flyting, Sounding, Debate," pp. 445-55.
8. The Beowulf passages are taken from Klaeber's 3rd edition (Lexington, MA, 1950), Maldon and Waldere from The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, ed., ASPR 6 (New York, 1942); I use line citations for these. All translations are my own. Shine and the Titanic can be found in Langston Hughes, The Book of Negro Humor (New York, 1966), pp. 91-92.
9. Because of various obstacles parents and administrators, to name two powerful ones the gangsta rap material would be inappropriate for use in a

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high-school class, although the toastings and non-scatological soundings could be used in a high-school course.
10. Howell D. Chickering, Jr., in Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition (New York, 1977), p. 300, connects this corrective-cum-boasting with a similar incident in Book 8 of the Odyssey and its insult quarrel between Odysseus and Euryalus.
11. Clarence Page, Showing My Color: Impolite Essays on Race and Identity (New York, 1996), p. 80.
12. Edward B. Irving, Jr., Rereading Beowulf (Philadelphia, 1989), p. 42.
13. Parks, "Flyting, Sounding, Debate," p. 441.
14. Murphy, "Vows, Boasts and Taunts," p. 106.
15. Christopher Ball, "Byrhtnoth's Weapons," Notes and Queries n.s. 36 (1989), 8-9, at 9. 16. Parks, Verbal Dueling, p. 68.
17. Parks, "Flyting, Sounding, Debate," p. 441.
18. Murphy, "Vows, Boasts and Taunts," p. 106.
19. Dan Burley, "The Dirty Dozen," The Citizen Call, 30 July, 1960, in Hughes, The Book of Negro Humor, pp. 119-21, at 120-21. According to Burley, black field hands used the verbal assault of "The Dozens" against the favored house slaves in lieu of physical attack. The name "Dozens," he says, became attached to the practice of vilifying one's relatives and ancestors when an anonymous "blues pianist and singer composed an uncopyrighted tune called The Dirty Dozen,' complete with words, which because of their very nature never got on paper. But at barrel-house and buffet flat-house rent parties The Dirty Dozens' became the rage" (pp. 120-21). Abrahams says various researchers have suggested the name may refer to: twelve scatological rhymes mothers used; unlucky twelve in craps; a corruption of "doesn't" ("at least my mother doesn't"); or from eighteenth-century definitions of "dozen" meaning "to stun, stupefy, daze" (Deep Down in the South, pp. 49-50, note 5).
20. William Labov, Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular (Philadelphia, 1972), pp. 306-7. A new, non-rhymed, non-couplet form of flyting has lately gained currency with young people and athletes: dissing (from dis-respecting), which crosses racial boundaries.
21. Page, Showing My Color, p. 4.
22. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle, p. 31.
23. Page, Showing My Color, p. 104.
24. Labov, Language in the Inner City, p. 307.
25. Labov, Language in the Inner City, p. 308.
26. Labov, Language in the Inner City, p. 352.
27. Labov, Language in the Inner City, p. 341.
28. Page, Showing My Color, p. 137. The phrase starting "Yo' momma . . ." has become so common in sounding that currently "yo' momma" stands by itself as an insult: We both know, the speaker implies, that your mother is inferior to us, but we don't have time to start sounding.
29. Labov, Language in the Inner City, p. 323.

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30. Labov, Language in the Inner City, p. 324.
31. Labov, Language of the Inner City, p. 324.
32. Hughes, The Book of Negro Humor, pp. 91-92. For another version, see "The Titanic" Toast 1B by "Kid" in Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle, p. 119.
33. He reports only that "[t]his is a Harlem variant" as told to him "on Eighth Avenue, 1956" (The Book of Negro Humor, p. 91). Although Hughes does not claim to have reworked the material, one can see a poet's hand at some points.
34. See Alexandra Hennessey Olsen, "Women in Beowulf," Approaches to Teaching "Beowulf", ed. Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. and Robert F. Yeager (New York, 1984), pp. 150-56, at 153.
35. See Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle, pp. 123-57, for versions of the latter two.
36. L. F. Anderson, The Anglo-Saxon Scop (n.p., 1903), pp. 21-23.
37. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle, p. 102.
38. For those who wish to pursue the versification of toasting, see Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle, pp. 99-103.
39. Linda M. Harrington, "On Capitol Hill, a real rap session," Chicago Tribune, Fox Valley ed., 24 Feb. 1994, pp. 1, 18, at 18.
40. Parks, "Flyting and Fighting," 301-2.
41. Page, Showing My Color, p. 59.
42. In order of usage: Public Enemy, "Welcome to the Terrordome" and "Burn Hollywood Burn," prod. Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet (CBS Records, AAD 45413, 1989); Eazy-E, "Any Last Werdz?," prod. Eazy-Muthafucka-E, It's on (Dr. Dre) 187UMKilla (Ruthless Records, 88561-5503-Z, n.d.); Ice Cube, "Jacket Notes," "When Will They Shoot," and "Say Hi to the Bad Guy," prod. Ice Cube, The Predator (Priority Records, P2 57185, 1992). Neither Eazy-E nor Ice Cube provides lyric sheets. Therefore, the line divisions and spelling of the words are my own approximation.
43. See Deborah Fuller Wess, in Hughes, The Book of Negro Humor, p. 158.
44. See Allen J. Frantzen, "When Women Aren't Enough," Speculum 68 (1993), 445-71, for an informative discussion of gender construction in Anglo-Saxon hagiography. Although Frantzen does not touch on Judith, what he says regarding AElfric's homilies applies: "[W]omen can be saved only by becoming like men . . . [T]he woman earns salvation by acquiring a man's nature" (p. 464).
45. See Bernice W. Kliman, "Teaching Beowulf in Translation to Undergraduates," in Approaches to Teaching Beowulf, ed. Bessinger and Yeager, pp. 61-64.
46. Diana M. DeLuca, "Teaching Beowulf in Translation to Undergraduates," in Approaches to Teaching Beowulf, ed. Bessinger and Yeager, pp. 68-70, at 70.
47. Stephen A. Barney, "The Words," in Approaches to Teaching Beowulf , ed. Bessinger and Yeager, pp. 162-72, at 167.
48. Page, Showing My Color , p. 77.