When someone dies, their friends may commemorate their life and deeds with a memorial service, an obituary in the local newspaper, maybe even a few chosen words on the person’s gravestone. Some people have even done similar commemorations for an animal like a famous racehorse (think Secretariat) or even a gorilla (think King Kong). But what about a fish? Have there ever been any honors paid to a lowly fish? Yes, in fact, there has been at least one fish which was honored.
The small village of Blockley, England has a modest house visited by many people over the years, not to see the garden or antiques, but to see a wooden memorial to a beloved trout that lived over 160 years ago. In 1855, a young man carved the plaque to a fish that his father had tamed. The plaque, reproduced here says the following:
“In Memory of the old fish./ Under the soil/the old fish do lie/20 years he lived/and then did die./He was so tame/you understand/he would come and/eat out of our hand/Died April the 20th 1855/Aged 20 years”
The fact that there were funeral directors in the family of the man who tamed the trout, William Keyte, may have explained the unusual flight of fancy. But no one can doubt the affection that Keyte held for the trout, which would swim to the surface of the pond whenever the man would approach. When a vengeful neighbor killed the fish with a blow to the head, it must have been a sad day for the Keyte Family.
Every year piscatorial fans of the long-dead fish pay visits to the cottage where the plaque hangs and to the grave where the fish lies. In 1955, on the hundredth anniversary of the demise of the fish, the local newspaper had a long tribute to the most famous resident of the village, a tribute that included these words: “He did no great deeds, nor did he change the world for the better or for the worse.” And these: “Though the guns are silent and the flags unhoisted, let us now acclaim him who in a century of change and violence has occasionally reminded men of tenderer things! Perhaps from those secret depths where good fish go when their swimming days are o’er, the Old Fish gazes up at us today, a gleam of pride in his cold unblinking eye. Old Fish, we salute you! May your fame endure forever.”
Not bad for a finny creature that died in 1855. May our descendants remember each of us in similar praise long after we have left this earthly life.
Kevin McCarthy, the award-winning author of “The Galata Bridge in Istanbul” (2016), can be reached at ceyhankevin@gmail.com.