Modern follies: a new song

This learned lyric is grown from the 1749 song type that began “Ye Medley of Mortals that make up this throng” and had as its chorus, “Sing tantara-ra-ra, truth all” (Defesch). Usually a vehicle for comic and cynical texts of factional politics and social satire, this song takes up different examples of folly or vice in turn, holding each up to disdain and ridicule. While this particular text did not last, it is of the type that Norman Cazden calls “Puttin’ On the Style,” that is, putting on airs, a genre that became common in the late nineteenth century (Cazden, Haufrecht, and Studer, Folk Songs 402-12). A local production, the broadside text was printed in full in the Boston Satirist on February 19, 1813. The author’s comments preceded the lyric:

Mr. Lash’em,
Having been sometime absent from town, I was entirely ignorant of the existence of the Satirist, until a few evening[s] since. One of your correspondents having invited me to spend a social hour with him, the principal topic of our conversation was the prevailing absurdities of the metropolis, which my friend facetiously styled “Boston Follies.” Improving by the hints which he gave on the subject, I have thrown together the following lines, which I hope will amuse a portion if not all of your readers.
Yours, &c.
Peter Peeper

While the new text is of the same type as its model, it is in duple meter and does not fit the old 6/8 “medley” tune.