A street seller from Limerick
c. 1850 · Limerick, Ireland · London, England · Said to Mayhew by a middle-aged street seller from Limerick in Ireland. He is speaking of the potato blight and the Great Famine of the 1840s. His dialect is written as it sounded.
“It was about an acre, and the taties was well known to be good. But the sore times came, and the taties was afflicted, and the wife and me--I have no childer--hadn’t a bite nor a sup, but wather to live on, and an igg or two. I filt the famine a-comin’.”
Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, vol. 1 · the street-Irish
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Babur بابر
February 1529 · Fergana · Kabul · Agra · Even after he had taken India he could not forget the melons and grapes of home
a melon was brought to me; to cut and eat it affected me strangely; I was all tears!Letter to his friend Khwaja Kalan in Kabul, in the Baburnama · in place of the original: the English translation by Annette Beveridge (1922)
Hayashi Fumiko 林芙美子
1930 · Showa Japan
I am a wanderer by destiny. I have no home town.
私は宿命的に放浪者である。私は古里を持たない。Diary of a Vagabond (Horoki), the opening
A visitor to Pompeii
1st century · Pompeii, Italy · The Lares were the guardian gods kept in every household. The spelling is as it stands on the wall.
We came here full of longing; much more do we long to go, so that we may see our household gods again, O Rome.
venimus hoc cupidi, multo magis hire cupjimus ut liceat nostros visere, Roma, Lares.Graffito at Pompeii · Diehl, Pompeianische Wandinschriften 14
Irenaeus Εἰρηναῖος
2nd–3rd century · Roman Egypt · Rome · From a man on one of the ships that carried Egypt's grain to Rome, to his brother Apolinarius at home. The spelling is as it stands on the papyrus.
I want you to know that I reached land on the 6th of the month Epeiph, and we finished unloading on the 18th of the same month. I went up to Rome on the 25th, and the place received us as the god willed. Every day we are waiting for our discharge; up to today not one of those who came with the grain has been released.
γινώσσκειν σε θέλω ὅτει εἰς γῆν ἐλήλυθα τῇ ϛ τοῦ Ἐπεὶφ μηνὸς καὶ ἐξεκενώσαμεν τῇ ιη τοῦ αὐτοῦ μηνός. ἀνέβην δὲ εἰς Ῥώμην τῇ κε τοῦ αὐτοῦ μηνὸς καὶ παρεδέξατο ἡμᾶς ὁ τόπος ὡς ὁ θεὸς ἤθελεν, καὶ καθʼ ἡμέραν προσδεχόμ[ε]θα διμισσωρίαν ὥστε ἕως σήμερον μηδέναν ἀπολελύσθαι τῶν μετὰ σίτου.
Berlin Papyri I 27 (BGU I 27)
1 in 100 Billion · The social network of those who came before us