“She's Gone to be a Mormonite”
Description
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do And that without delay, I'll pack my trunk and I'll be off, I'll go this very day." The singer tells of a girl who's "Gone to be a Mormonite In the new Jerusalem." (He?) knows not where she is, except that she's Mormon
Notes
Although I have no direct evidence of it, I suspect -- both for psychological reasons (why would a *girl* want to be a Mormon?) and the strange constructions in Randolph's text of the song -- that it was a man who was originally referred to here. (So, apparently, in Hubbard's version.) How it came to refer to a woman I do not know.
To be fair, there was a legend that said that Mormon men were particularly sexually proficient (see the notes to "The Mormon Cowboy" in Logdson's _The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing_), and Fawn M. Brodie's biography of Joseph Smith, _No Man Knows My History_ (1945, 1971; I use the 1995 Vintage Books edition), p. xii, notes that Smith had some fifty wives in his life, most of them voluntary -- and that over 200 wives "married" him after his death. (Of course, they were safe from him when dead.) - RBW
References
- Randolph 501, "She's Gone to be a Mormonite" (1 text)
- Roud #7640
- BI, R501