21 September 2021
A red herring is something that distracts or is misleading, especially a false clue in an investigation or an ancillary issue that keeps people from focusing on the primary issue. It is also a fish, a smoked kipper that has turned red during the curing process.
Literal use of red herring referring to the fish dates to the fourteenth century. The figurative sense comes from the world of hunting and the practice of dragging a red herring along a trail in order to train or exercise hounds and horses. The hounds would follow the scent of the fish as if it were prey. Thomas Nash mentions this practice in his 1599 essay The Praise of the Red Herring:
Next, to draw on hounds to a sent, to a redde herring skinne there is nothing comparable.
This practice would later be misunderstood to be one used by poachers or others intent on disrupting a hunt. There are several humorous stories about people using a red herring to distract hounds, but if this ever actually happened it was a rare occurrence. Rather, it seems the stories were invented to connect the idea of distraction with the hunting practice in order to make the metaphor more apparent on its face.
A fuller description of the actual hunting practice is given in Gerald Langbaine’s 1685 The Hunter. A Discourse of Horsemanship:
Now that I may not leave you in ignorance what a Train scent is, I shall acquaint you that it has its Name, as I suppose, from the manner of it, viz. the trailing or dragging of a dead Cat or Fox (and in case of Necessity a Red-herring) three or four Miles, (according to the Will of the Rider, or the directions given him) and then laying the Dogs on the scent.
Langbaine’s book, written anonymously, was published for the bookseller Nicolas Cox, who would go on to reprint the book under his own name.
The figurative use also appears by the 1680s. From John Northleigh’s 1682 A Gentle Reflection on the Modest Account in a discussion of dissenters (i.e., Roman Catholics and non-Anglican Protestants) in England:
Your business in the next Paragraph, is to make the discover'd Association a Popish Hobgoblin too, a Mormo conjur'd up at White-Hall; or to use your own expression, The keeping Hounds in full cry with a Red-Herring, out of their own Kitchin, trail'd through the Kingdom to make a noise.
A pleasant Metaphor, I confess, in comparing a piece of Rebellion with a Red-Herring; somewhat a more apposite Allegory, even upon this account, because both are great Commodities in the Dutch Common-wealths; but I fancy, my Lord, could your Party but have kept this Herring close, and drying in their own Chimney, till the Nations Palate had been a little better disposed to relish such a salt Bit, the Dogs that would have follow'd the scent then, I am afraid would have shown themselves a thirsty sort of Blood-Hounds, and took some of the King's best Subjects for their Prey; but now this dried Fish has took a little Air, and rank Treason stunk and offended the whole Kingdom, ’tis no wonder if your Party won’t allow the Dish to come out of their Kitchin, when it looks as if it had been drest in Hell, and had the Devil for its Cook.
And also in 1682, Thomas Shadwell uses the metaphor in his satire The Medal of John Bayes, albeit without explicitly referring to the hunting practice:
But we doubt not but if you had found or put the Libel your Poet was Cudgell’d for (though few of your Loyal Closets, perhaps, are without that, and other Libels upon the King) into the Earls Closet, ye would have set up an abhorrence of that, rather than not have kept up the Fermentation and Division amongst the people. When this is run out of breath, we suppose ye will set up the Ticket for the Forbidden Dinner, and ye will abhor Factious, Schismatical, Seditious, Fanatical, and Rebellious Dining, or some new Red-Herring out of his Lordships Kitchin will come forth.
These two appearances in the same year strongly hint that the figurative use was already established by this date.
A neat, little story about the death and estate of Jasper Mayne, a seventeenth-century cleric and playwright, that uses the red herring metaphor in a very inventive fashion appears by 1691. It is found in Gerard Langbaine’s, the same man who wrote the above treatise on hunting, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets. Mayne had died in 1672:
He had a Servant who had long liv’d with him, to whom he bequeath’d a Trunk, and in Somewhat (as he said) that would make him Drink after his Death. The Doctor being dead the Trunk, was speedily visited by his Servant with mighty Expectation, where he found this promising Legacy to be nothing but a Red-Herring: So that it may be said of him, that his propensity to innocent Raillery was so great, that it kept him Company even after death.
Apparently, there was an actual dead fish in the trunk, so it’s both a literal and figurative red herring. But also, red herrings, being salty, make one crave a beverage. The metaphors and humor are operating on several, albeit all low, levels here. The story has been reprinted multiple times over the years and was especially popular in the mid nineteenth century.
The metaphorical use gets going in earnest in the mid eighteenth century. There is this dialogue about the good and bad effects of the pursuit of fame that was printed in Lloyd’s Evening Post for 20–22 June 1763:
L[ord]. G. It is right, however, that mankind should persue it. It is productive of many good effects. The trumpet of Fame rouses great minds to great actions.
Lord O. And to many bad ones too. Fame, you know, my Lord, has too trumpets. And though the persuit of it may be good exercise for the general pack of mankind, and keep them in breath, it seems (to speak in my favourite language of a sportsman) to be only hunting a trail, to catch a red herring at last.
And a Nathanael Freebody uses the metaphor of dogs on the scent of a red herring to criticize skepticism in the 24–26 March 1767 issue of the St. James’s Chronicle:
One is not at all surprised that this Word should be disliked by the Sceptic, who hath no Notion of the Thing signified by it; “whose judgment, set afloat, (to use the Language of Mr. Hume) is carried to every Side, as it is pushed by the Current of his Humours and Passions.” He is the very Reverse of the Halcyon, and loves to make his Nest in the Ocean, when it is all over Storm and Tempest. He neither hopes nor desires to find Truth and Certainty, but employs his Powers in Quest of Probabilities and Appearances only, like a Pack of Dogs, in full Cry, after the Trail of a Red Herring.
A 21 March 1782 article in London’s Morning Chronicle uses the metaphor to criticize those who advocated for continuing the fight to keep the American colonies British:
Though he had not the honour of being one of those sagacious country gentlemen, who had so long vociferated for the American war, (a war which he should ever think impolitic, unjust, and inexpedient) who had so long run on the red herring scent of American taxation, before they found out there was no game a foot.
I had mentioned that the idea of poachers or others who used a red herring to disrupt a hunt was in itself a red herring of sorts, but there are some stories about it happening. Here is one that was printed in the Manchester Herald on 28 April 1792. Given that it is citing another paper (a “friend of a friend” as they say in urban legend circles), there is good reason to question whether or not it actually happened. I have been unable to locate the story in archives of the Norfolk Chronicle:
The Norfolk Chronicle informs the world, that a party of the Sons of Nimrod, with the hounds belonging to a subscription hunt in that county, had a most excellent diversion; the dogs were never at fault for many minutes; one continued the case lasted for forty miles:— rewarded for their toil, the object of it took cover in a public house: the shouts of the hunters echoed through the air, whilst the horns sounded the triumph to the woods: when lo! upon searching the house, not Reynard, but a RED HERRING, was found, which a Wag had trailed before the hounds!
Another account of a red herring being used to distract the hounds on a hunt, this one a first-hand one, was given by William Cobbett in his Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register of 14 February 1807. Cobbett is a fascinating fellow, a politically radical pamphleteer and propagandist—at one point he had to flee to the United States to avoid prison in England—a journalist, briefly a member of Parliament, and a best-selling grammarian. What’s not to like about the man? But Cobbett was not one to let truth get in the way of a good story, so he may have been making up the bit about his using a red herring to distract a hunt:
When I was a boy, we used, in order to draw off the harriers from the trail of a hare that we had set down as our own private property, get to her haunt early in the morning, and drag a red-herring, tied to a string, four or five miles over hedges and ditches, across fields and through coppices, till we got to a point, whence we were pretty sure the hunters would not return to the spot where they had thrown off; and, though I would, by no means, be understood, as comparing the editors and proprietors of the London daily press to animals half so sagacious and so faithful as hounds, I cannot help thinking, that, in the case to which we are referring, they must have been misled, at first, by some political deceiver.
[...]
Alas! it was a mere transitory effect of the political red-herring; for, on the Saturday, the scent became as cold as a stone; and, on the Monday, the Morning Chronicle solemnly assured its readers, that the little bulletin, which it had published itself under the name of Lord Howick, never had been promulgated by, or received the sanction of, his Majesty’s Ministers!
The Oxford English Dictionary, and others, credit Cobbett with inventing the idea of distracting hounds as the basis for the metaphor. The OED also lists him as the earliest citation of the figurative use. But, as we have seen, both the figurative use and the idea that it is grounded in distracted dogs predates his use of it by a considerable period.
I’ll conclude with two slightly later uses of red herring. The first is an impoverished, retired, English general in India who uses a red herring at the breakfast table as an excuse to change the subject when the topic of his paying for a niece’s marriage arises in conversation. From the Asiatic Journal of July 1816:
Here the General coughed as if the tail of his red-herring had got down this throat, and I really thought it was so; but his sister was much more keen-sighted, and notwithstanding the General’s groans about those times being past, and stammering about alteration of circumstances, she appeared to conceive no small hopes that he had motives more of policy than necessity for giving out that he was poor; and seemed as little inclined as the General to pursue the subject, and another red-herring coming in, the General took the opportunity of giving an entire change to the conversation.
And the second is another description of using a red herring on a hunt, here to provide something for the hounds to follow when there is no fox to be hunted. It’s interesting primarily for the mythological reference to the story of Actaeon. From London’s Morning Chronicle of 25 March 1818:
Lord ELL—NB—II attended, but the exercise of stag hunting was too severe; and he went out with a dozen dogs in pursuit, as it was pretended, of a fox, but it was only a red-herring dragged for scent. His Lordship did not long appear to relish the sport, was uneasy in his seat, and it not being a private Pack, the dogs were unmanagable, and he was at last completely thrown out. He exclaimed frequently
“Actæon ego sum, dominum cognoscite vestrum,” [I am Actæon, recognize your master]
but all in vain.
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