Cohabs, The

DESCRIPTION: "Now, you cohabs, still dodging around, You'd better keep on underground, For if with #2 you're found, They'll put you into limbo." The song details the fate awaiting men discovered living with two or more wives (i.e. "cohabs," or "cohabitators")
AUTHOR: George Hicks? (Source: Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah's informant F. Y. Morse)
EARLIEST DATE: 1947 (Fife/Fife-SaintsOfSageAndSaddle)
KEYWORDS: love wife prison crime humorous
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1890 - Mormon church abandons polygamy.
FOUND IN: US(Ro)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah, #222, "The Cohabs" (1 text)
Cheney-MormonSongs, p. 82, "Put You into Limbo" (1 text)
Fife/Fife-SaintsOfSageAndSaddle, p. 173, "(All you cohabs that dodge around)" (1 fragment); p. 332, "Put You Into Limbo" (1 text)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, p. 223, "The Cohabs" (1 text, tune referenced)
Roud #10836
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The King of the Cannibal Islands" (tune, according to Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest)
NOTES [171 words]: Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah appears to believe that this song dates from before 1890, when the Mormon Church abandoned polygamy. But, of course, some Mormons continued to secretly practice polygamy, so it is possible that it is newer.
Claudia Lauper Bushman and Richard Lyman Bushman, Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America, Oxford University Press, 1999, 2001, p. 70, say "Polygamy per se was difficult to prove, so suspects were tried instead for 'unlawful cohabitation,' resulting in 1,004 convictions between 1884 and 1893, with 31 more convictions for polygamy itself.... The number of convictions would no doubt have been higher if many people had not simply disappeared from view, avoiding the law in an 'underground' of safehouses and hiding places. Federal marshals chased after, tracked down, and hunted the 'cohabs....' Church affairs slowed to a halt during the raids, with most leaders in jail or in hiding. Still, the Mormons did not capitulate." Until 1890, anyway, when they gave in. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: Hubb222

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