Quick poll (honor system)
 

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!

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.

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

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

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

Jeanne

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.

No, I had not.

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

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.

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

Susan

Yes, long ago when I was still in the Midwest, perhaps during the high school years, though I remember it the same way Jerome and Susan do.

Ed

I'm confused, Jerome.

L3 in your posted version is to the Cabots, while Jerome remembers it as to Cabots.

I agree with Jerome's version.

Richard

Ah, I see now. That's one of many variants. The posted version is, I think, as authoritative as we have--but you'll just have to twist in your shorts until the next issue of Light to get the explanation.

I can't remember when I first heard this but it was a long time ago. I have come across it as a quiz question, being asked to supply the last line.

Yes, but I only remembered lines 3 and 4.

Jerome's version is metrically better, in any case.

Yes, My Grandfather (a Harvard man stalwart and hairy) was fond of it and said it once a month at least.

I read it in one of the anthologies of light verse I loved as a kid, and did not remember Sargent as the author. I've got the same third line in my head as Jerome Betts. I was confused by it, because I didn't know what a Lowell or a Cabot was.

Not that I can recall. But it seems so very familiar; I'm thinking that I should remember.

I've known this one for what seems like all my life - probably since college, and definitely long before I moved to Boston. I remember the joy I had in (eventually) realizing that Henry Cabot Lodge was of the Cabots. I also seem to remember (can't remember the name, and I'm being a good guy and not googling) that it was a tune not just a poem, written by a classy and funny gentleman who ground out dozens of similar numbers, very funny, social and political subjects, a big entertainer on the college scene in the fifties and sixties and beyond. Assuming I'm right, you probably caught him at Harvard. (He never played Cooper Union.) And I remember L3 as Jerome does.

Yes, quite a few times over the decades. A bit of Americana that apparently is fading into the past.

The Wikipedia article Boston Brahmin here gives a version and attributes it to John Collins Bossidy here.

This was cross posted with Michael. The funny singer he mentions is, I think, Tom Lehrer, who is still alive. Lehrer might well have used the verse.

— Woody

Yes. ten more characters?

Like R.A., I knew I recognized the verse from some anthology or other, but I was surprised (when I threw my honor system out the window and went to my bookshelf) that of the 5 light verse anthologies I've got that don't focus exclusively on the British, the poem (nearly but not quite identical to the one at the top of the thread) is in 4 of them!

(I originally typed in more information about those books and the poem, but, not sure whether that would queer the results Mike's after, I'm removing all that.)

Thanks Max!

I am not sure if I read/heard it before. If I did, it obviously fled my memory.

Heard it in song on a folkie record, and mainly was impressed with the last two lines.

Oh. The lecturer didn't say that Sargent was the author--just that the Sargents were one of the Boston Brahmin families (like the Cabots and Lowells).

I didn't see what Max posted above before he pulled it...but according to a 1927 Boston Post article, the poem's author insisted that the definitive version was the one Mike originally posted. Consider me gobsmacked.

Yes, it runs through my head any time I hear "Boston".

But I remember it thus:

And here's to dear old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots,
And the Cabots speak only with God.

I may remember it wrong, but that's how I always say it to myself.

Janice's version rings a bell with me. I imagine that popular tradition has altered the original to one form or other of "Here's to...", which is the customary introduction to a toast.

My Bartlett's, which quotes the same John Collins Bossidy original as does Wikipedia, has a footnote:

Patterned on the toast given at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Harvard Class of 1880, by a Westerner:

Here's to old Massachusetts.
The home of the sacred cod
Where the Adamses vote for Douglas
And the Cabots walk with God.

I think Bossidy as modified by tradition is the best of the lot.

— Woody

Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (/ˈloʊəl/; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the Mayflower.
from Wiki,
I remembered, vaguely, reading the poem in relation to Lowell and checked to make sure.
T. S. Eliot was born into the Eliot family, a Boston Brahmin family with roots in England and New England.
also from Wiki
I also had a recollection of this, those brahmins produced two very good poets.
ps apologies for looking this up, ' honor system' is not used here and it didn't register that this was a test.

It is in (I thnk) one o those marvellous books of Penguin Comic and Curious Verse where I read it in the Sixties . I hadn't the slightest idea what it meant of course.

I first heard it from an English friend in London, which I thought was funny since I’m from Beantown and never heard it there. “Love that dirty water,” the MBTA, and the Red Sox were closer to my experience of Boston, although I did have an ice cream cone once or twice at Cabot’s in Newton. I think my friend recited only the last three lines, and put it in Jerome's wording.

Jonathan Raban quotes it in the introduction to his Faber selection of Robert Lowell's Poems. I think I have probably also seen it in the anthologies quoted by John.

FWIW, it didn't ring a bell for me until Jerome mentioned "only to Cabots".

I too thought I must have seen it in the Penguin anthologies John and Gregory mention. But can't find it there. Also thought it must have been quoted in the bios preceding work by T.S. Eliot in other anthologies, but again can't find it. But perfectly familiar from somewhere from a fairly early age.

This thread has led me to check other things that were always a vague puzzle. The Boston Cabots were founded by a Channel Islander born 1680 (hence the French-sounding name?)and no connection with John Cabot the Italian who discovered Newfoundland, and baked beans (in a pot) were a Native American invention passed on to the early settlers of New England.

Thank you, Michael.

Yes, usually in the form of a toast, "So here's to good old Boston."

Dialogue from Yes Minsiter about titles for civil servants.

Bernard:Well, take the Foreign Office. First you get the CMG, then the KCMG, then the GCMG; the Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, Knight Commander of St Michael and St George, Knight Grand Cross of St Michael and St George. Of course, in the Service, CMG stands for "Call Me God," and KCMG for "Kindly Call Me God."
Hacker: [chuckles] What does GCMG stand for?
Bernard: "God Calls Me God."

Yes, many times, from an early age, but I remember it like so:

Here’s to good ol’ Boston
Home of the bean and the cod
Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots
And the Cabots speak only to God

I heard it a long time ago, probably in high school.

Yes, I heard or read it many years back, but I couldn't tell you when, where, or anything about the context.