I happen to be particularly fond of Puddingstone, the conglomerate rock found around Boston. It’s also the official rock of Massachusetts; specifically Roxbury Puddingstone.
It’s a nifty looking rock, or rather a collection of different rocks within a sedimentary rock.
It also has some fantastical elements:
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a poem entitled The Dorchester Giant that describes Boston’s puddingstone being the result of the abandoned children of a giant flinging plum pudding about:
What are those lone ones doing now,
The wife and the children sad?
Oh, they are in a terrible rout,
Screaming, and throwing their pudding about,
Acting as they were mad.They flung it over to Roxbury hills,
They flung it over the plain,
And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw;
They tumbled as thick as rain.
Puddingstone is also to be imbued with magical and protective powers. Herfordshire Puddingstone was used to cover the top of witch’s coffin to prevent her to escape in death.
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