Indeed, one of the more interesting aspects of graffiti is that in an impermanent form it testifies to the continuance over the centuries of certain human concerns. Recent studies of graffiti have often focused on particular modern conflicts between races or nations, on drug problems, and on specific political commentary.[3] But such local matters aside, the content of modern graffiti is surprisingly like that of earlier periods: scatological observations, laments of lovers, accusations against women for their sexual promiscuity, the repetition of “trite” poems and sayings, and messages attributed to various men and women suggesting their sexual availability and proficiency. And if the political targets have changed over the years, many of the political attitudes have remained consistent. Graffiti is an irreverent form, with strong popular and anti-establishment elements. As actions common to all classes, eating, drinking, defecation, and fornication find their lowly record in graffiti-like form. [Footnote 3: See, for example, Elizabeth Wales and Barbara Brewer, “Graffiti in the 1970’s,” _Journal of Social Psychology_ 99 (1976): 115-23.] On the most basic level, a writer will observe that the excrement of the rich differs in no way from that of the poor. Thus one poem, taken supposedly from a “Person of Quality’s Boghouse,” has the following sentiment: Good Lord! who could think, That such fine Folks should stink? (Pt. 2, p. 25) There is nothing very polite about such observations, and no pretension to art. These verses belong strictly to folklore and the sociology of literature, but they suggest some continuing rumbles of discontent against the class system, the existence among the lower orders of some of the egalitarian attitudes that survived the passing of the Lollards and the Levellers. Who were the writers of these pieces? Were they indeed laborers? Or were they from the lower part of what was called the “middle orders”? Is there some evidence to be found in the very fact that they could write? Graffiti may, indeed, tell us something about degrees of literacy. One wit remarked that whatever the ability to read or write may have been at the time, almost everyone seemed to have been literate when presented with a bog-house wall: “Since all who come to Bog-house write” (pt. 2, p. 26). The traditional connection between defecation and writing was another comparison apparent to the commentators. One wrote: There’s Nothing foul that we commit, But what we write, and what we sh - - t. (Pt. 2, p. 13) And the lack of some paper or material to clean the rear end provoked the following sentiment in the form of a litany: