The humorous works show Dunbar at his finest. The best specimen of this work, of which the outstanding characteristics are sheer whimsicality and topsy-turvy humour, is "The Ballad of Kynd Kittok". This strain runs throughout many of the occasional poems, and is not wanting in odd passages in Dunbar's contemporaries; and it has the additional interest of showing a direct historical relationship with the work of later Scottish poets, and chiefly with that of Robert Burns. Dunbar's satire often becomes invective. Examples of this type are "The Satire on Edinburgh", "The General Satire", the "Epitaph on Donald Owre", and the powerful vision of "The Dance of the Sevin Deidlie Synnis". Two satirical ballads lampoon a colleague at court, the would-be aviator John Damian. In "The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy", an outstanding specimen of a favourite northern form, analogous to the continental estrif, or tenzone, he and his rival reach a height of scurrility which is certainly without parallel in English literature. This poem has the additional interest of showing the antipathy between the Scots-speaking inhabitants of the Lothians and the Gaelic-speaking folk of Carrick, in southern Ayrshire, where Walter Kennedy was from.