[2] 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.

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.

[8] Poised high aloft the old hall of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, riding serenely the sound waves of debate, unperturbed by the ebb and flow of enactment and repeal or the desultory storms that vexed the nether depths of oratory, there has hung through immemorial years an ancient codfish, quaintly wrought in wood and painted to the life.

Humble the subject and homely the design; yet this painted image bears on its finny front a majesty greater than the dignity that art can lend to graven gold or chiselled marble.

[C]: 17 Assuming it existed and whatever its origin (the Committee continued), when the 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".

Mayhap some burly British trooper, quartered in the improvised barracks of the old State House [during the siege of Boston], took umbrage at the spick and span elegance of the newly painted emblem of colonial independence and thrift.

Such a one may have torn down the cherished symbol from the wall whence it had offered aid and comfort to the rebel patriots, with its assurance of the material wealth accessible to the embryonic State, and, in spirit of vandalism so prevalent at that age, used it to replenish his evening camp fire.

[note 2] On January 2, 1895‍—‌the House's last day of business before relocating to a new chamber in the same building— the question of taking with it the "representation of a codfish," which for more than a hundred years had never missed a "roll call," was brought up for consideration.

[18] 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."

[19] 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".

As an object of art it is worthless"‍—‌Massachusetts officials were "shocked into a condition bordering on speechlessness" by the theft,[14] "some legislators holding that it would be sacrilege to transact business without the emblem of the Commonwealth looking down upon them."

Detectives followed "scores" of clues, one of which took them to a Cambridge box factory and from there to "collegiate circles"[27]‍—‌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.

[29] 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.

[27] 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.

[32][1] 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."

In that chaotic revolutionary period which left us no record of the loss or destruction of the object of Thomas Crafts' artistic attention, the Welch family may easily have lost trace of it, and have taken it for granted that the older emblem is the actual symbol of today."

When first I set my roving feet / Upon Bostonian sod, I hastened blithely up the street / To view the Sacred Cod, And in its dull and glassy eyes, / The instant of our meeting, I fancied that I saw arise / A glance of cordial greeting.