The hobbies

The Hobbies is the only broadside in the Thomas collection set in italic type. Coverly may have had most of his regular type tied up in a pamphlet. He even had to use an old long s type for his imprint line.

According to an early printing, this song was “written and sung [in July 1797] by Mr. [John Brown] Williamson at the Hey Market Theatre, Boston, with universal applause” (Porter, With an Air 10-11; Sonneck, Bibliography 189; Wolfe, “Secular Music” #3879-80). The lyric is a satire on society, but ends with a dramatic appeal for free trade. The tune to which it was set is a song called, “Ge ho Dobbin,” a lusty text with overtly sexual lyrics. Williamson’s lyrics make direct references to the older text, but the sexual overtones are no longer present. Interestingly, the early connotation of “Ge ho Dobbin” does not seem to have lasted because it was used for temperance songs and political parodies, such as “Up Salt River,” into the 1840s. The Hobbies appeared in forty-nine songsters between 1797 and 1820 (R. Keller,  Early American Songsters).