[Michael Juster]

Have you heard/read the following lines?

And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.

Please enjoy your responses, as always, but it is a seriously intended question that might affect something I am working on.

As always, thanks!

[Roger Slater]

No, I don't think I've heard/read it before, though I have the faintest sense of deja vu that is likely brought on by the power of suggestion but possibly means I came across it before.

[Simon Hunt]

yes but can't remember where or when...

[Jerome Betts]

Yes, but with the third line as Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots.

[Jeanne G]

Nope. But I think I've read/heard different variants w/ different names plugged in.

Jeanne

[Julie Steiner]

I heard it quoted in an art history lecture on John Singer Sargent, because the lecturer was (justly) worried that his Californian audience might never have heard of the Boston Brahmins.

I later ran across it in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, with author and context provided, and the third line as Jerome remembers it. (Yes, I've besmirched my honor to double-check it.) Citation available on request.

[E. Shaun Russell]

No, I had not.

[Richard Meyer]

Yes. I came across it in a poetry anthology long ago (late 1960s or early 1970s) while in college. In fact, I've had occasion to recite it over the years.

Richard

[Maryann Corbett]

Yes, half-spoken, half-sung by Pete Seeger in performance, back when he was with The Weavers. I don't think the tape we made of a friend's old vinyl record will still play, alas. The performance might date all the way back to the Fifties; I'd have to check The Weavers' dates.*

*Some digging suggests the record was the 1957 release of their 1955 Carnegie Hall concert.

[Susan McLean]

I heard it while I was still in high school, though it did have "to Cabots" in L3, as Jerome remembers it.

Susan