Sacred Cod

The Sacred Cod is a carved-wood effigy of an Atlantic codfish, painted to the life, hanging in the House of Representatives chamber of Boston's Massachusetts State House "a memorial of the importance of the Cod-Fishery to the welfare of this Commonwealth" (i.e. Massachusetts, of which cod is officially the "historic and continuing symbol"). The Sacred Cod has gone through as many as three incarnations over three centuries: the first (if it really existed the authoritative source calling it a "prehistoric creature of tradition") was lost in a 1747 fire; the second disappeared during the American Revolution; and the third, installed in 1784, is the one seen in the House chamber today. "Sacred Cod" is not a formal name but a nickname which appeared in 1895, soon after the carving was termed "the sacred emblem" by a House committee appointed "to investigate the significance of the emblem [which] has kept its place under all administrations, and has looked upon outgoing and incoming legislative assemblies, for more than one hundred years". Soon sacred cod was being used in reference to actual codfish as well, in recognition of the creature's role in building Massachusetts's prosperity and influence since early colonial times.…

The Sacred Cod is a carved-wood effigy of an Atlantic codfish, painted to the life, hanging in the House of Representatives chamber of Boston's Massachusetts State House "a memorial of the importance of the Cod-Fishery to the welfare of this Commonwealth" (i.e. Massachusetts, of which cod is officially the "historic and continuing symbol"). The Sacred Cod has gone through as many as three incarnations over three centuries: the first (if it really existed the authoritative source calling it a "prehistoric creature of tradition") was lost in a 1747 fire; the second disappeared during the American Revolution; and the third, installed in 1784, is the one seen in the House chamber today. "Sacred Cod" is not a formal name but a nickname which appeared in 1895, soon after the carving was termed "the sacred emblem" by a House committee appointed "to investigate the significance of the emblem [which] has kept its place under all administrations, and has looked upon outgoing and incoming legislative assemblies, for more than one hundred years". Soon sacred cod was being used in reference to actual codfish as well, in recognition of the creature's role in building Massachusetts's prosperity and influence since early colonial times. In 1933 the Sacred Cod was briefly "Cod-napped" by editors of the Harvard Lampoon, prompting police to drag the Charles River and search an airplane landing in New Jersey. In 1968 it was again taken briefly, this time by students at the University of Massachusetts Boston. A fish figure is displayed in the State House Senate chamber as well a brass casting (sometimes called the Holy Mackerel) above its central chandelier. __TOC__

First Cod

Of the Cod's first incarnation, the Committee on History of the Emblem of the Codfish (appointed by the House in 1895) wrote: Assuming it existed and whatever its origin (the Committee continued), when Boston's Old State House burned in 1747 "this prehistoric creature of tradition ... doubtless went up in a whirl of smoke which still clouds its history to the peering vision of the antiquarian".

Second Cod

A second Cod appeared sometime between 1748 (when the State House was rebuilt) and 1773 (when Thomas Crafts Jr. billed the Province of Massachusetts Bay, "To painting Codfish, 15 shillings"). But within a few years, the Committee wrote, the second Cod The Committee found "good reason to believe that this missing fish ... was carved by one John Welch, a Boston patriot".

Third Cod

The third Cod was installed in 1784 (the Committee continued) after Representative John Rowe namesake of Rowes Wharf and "a leading spirit in the stirring scenes that led up to the famous 'Boston Tea Party asked leave "to hang up the representation of a Cod Fish in the room where the House sit, as a memorial of the importance of the Cod-Fishery to the welfare of this Commonwealth, as had been usual formerly .... And so the emblem was suspended" in the old State House once again, and this Cod (which Rowe may have underwritten personally) is the one extant today. In 1798 the Cod was moved to the Representatives chamber in the new State House, where it originally hung over the Speaker's desk. In the 1850s it was moved to the rear of the chamber.

Committee on History of the Emblem of the Codfish

On January 2, 1895 the House's last day of business before relocating to a new chamber in the same building Accordingly, after "nearly two months of painstaking research and investigation" the three-member Committee on History of the Emblem of the Codfish submitted its report, and after debating "at length" the House ordered "immediate removal of the ancient 'representation of a codfish' from its present position in the chamber recently vacated by the House, and to cause it to be suspended ... in this chamber ...." A committee of fifteen was escorted by the Sergeant-at-Arms to the old House chamber, where the Sacred Cod was lowered by the assistant doorkeeper and wrapped in an American flag, then placed on a bier and borne by House messengers to the new House chamber, where the assembled Representatives rose in applause. After repainting by Walter M. Brackett, it was hung where it remains today: " between the two sets of central columns, and under the names 'Motley,' and 'Parkman'," above the chamber's clock. Since that move the Cod has faced north (that is, leftward as seen from the Speaker's rostrum), though after being repainted in 1965 it was, at least temporarily, rehung the other way.

"Sacred Cod" nickname

The Committee's report refers at one point to "the sacred emblem", and while it was working a poem appeared in the Boston Globe referring to the carving as "the Sacred Cod". Within a few years authors, journalists, and advertisers even those far from New England were using the term routinely. The phrase quickly came to refer not only to the wooden Cod in the State House but to actual cod from the sea as well, especially as an item of commerce. At the 1908 convention of the Retail Grocers of the United States, held in Boston, one delegate recalled Two years later the New Hampshire Board of Agriculture, bemoaning the counterfeiting of foodstuffs "famous for their distinctive properties or superior quality", warned that "haddock, hake, pollock, cusk, etc., are substituted indiscriminately in place of the sacred cod." In 1912 President William Howard Taft, in Boston, addressed a journalists' banquet in New York City "by long distance telephone from the home of the sacred cod". And in 1922 historian Samuel Eliot Morison, emphasizing fishing's vital role in the colonial economy, wrote that "Puritan Massachusetts derived her ideals from a sacred book; her wealth and power from the sacred cod." The famous doggerel poking fun at Boston's Brahmins paraphrases an earlier poem now little remembered:

"Cod-napping" and other incidents

Harvard Lampoon

In an incident now referred to as "The Cod-napping" by State House officials, on the evening of April 26, 1933, members¹ of the Harvard Lampoon (the Harvard College humor magazine) entered the House of Representatives gallery, cut down the Cod, and carried it away in an unusually large florist's box equipped with protruding decoy lilies. which reckoned the Cod's value to be "something less than nothing. As an object of art it is worthless" Massachusetts officials were "shocked into a condition bordering on speechlessness" by the theft, "some legislators holding that it would be sacrilege to transact business without the emblem of the Commonwealth looking down upon them." (Nonetheless, at the appointed time "[House] Speaker [[Leverett Saltonstall|[Leverett] Saltonstall]] looked mournfully at the vacant place and then banged the gavel. " Barnstable County offered the loan of its own codfish emblem for the duration of the crisis.) Meanwhile, Boston mayor James Michael Curley received a telephone message: "Tell the Mayor that when the Sacred Cod is returned it will be wrapped in the municipal flag, now flying in front of City Hall. Try and catch us when we cop the flag. Lafayette Mulligan, we are here." "Indignant" police dragged the Charles River and, acting on a tip that a Lampoon editor had flown to New Jersey with the Cod, had the plane searched on landing; the tip turned out to be a red herring. Detectives followed "scores" of clues, one of which took them to a Cambridge box factory and from there to "collegiate circles" a "6-foot youth" (tall enough to reach the wires suspending the Cod) had reportedly bought lilies from a Harvard-area florist before being seen in the State House on the day of the theft and several Harvard College students were questioned by the school's dean. "So much general interest was provoked that The Boston Transcript indulged in two columns of news, hearsay, and speculation upon the missing emblem," the Times further reported, later referring to the Cod as Boston's Palladium. Eventually a mysterious telephone call directed Harvard official Charles R. Apted to West Roxbury, where he was met by an automobile which he followed into some woods; there two young men, with collars up and hatbrims down, handed him the Cod (not wrapped in any flag) before speeding away. In the early hours of April 29, after repairs to three damaged fins, the Sacred Cod was re-hung in the House chamber, "six inches [15 cm] higher [than] the reach of any individual. A stepladder will be needed to remove it in the future."

University of Massachusetts

Using a stepladder, on November 14, 1968, students¹ at the new Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts took the Sacred Cod in protest of perceived legislative indifference to their school. ("Sacred Cod gone from House perch", the Boston Globe alerted its readers.) It was found days later in a little-used State House hallway.

Greyhound replacement proposal

In 1937 Representative John B. Wenzler offered a facetious proposal "that the sacred cod be immediately removed [from the House chamber], and a greyhound substituted in its place, as the 1937 Legislature has shown itself to be completely under the power of the dog track operators." Apted (whom the Boston Globe referred to as "Harvard Cop No. 1") wrote to Wenzler: "As one who is, and was, very much interested in preserving [the Cod's] dignity, and furthermore having held it in my arms ... I most respectfully ask a favor, that is: If the greyhound be substituted, that I be presented with the cod in order that it may be preserved for the future of young Americans."

World War II

After the House of Representatives moved to its new chamber in 1895, the Massachusetts Senate, which took over the old House chamber, incorporated a fish figure (often dubbed the Holy Mackerel) into the chandelier there, as a reminder of the Sacred Cod the Representatives had taken with them. When officials of the World War II aluminum-for-defense drive misinformed that the Sacred Cod was aluminum asked that it be donated to the war effort, House Speaker Christian Herter explained that the Cod had been created decades before aluminum's discovery, and suggested that the Holy Mackerel be considered for sacrifice instead.

Notes

Sources and further reading

Further reading Other sources cited

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