Dorchester Illustration no. 2334 Dorchester Giant
The conglomerate rock that naturally occurred in Dorchester and Roxbury (and actually much of the world) has engendered many references. St. Peter’s Church was built partly of the stone quarried from its site. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote of Dorchester puddingstone both in The Professor at the Breakfast Table and in a poem entitled ‘The Dorchester Giant’, a poem explaining the creation of the rock.
The poem was included in My Poetry Book. Illustrated by Willy Pogany. Chicago: John C. Winston, 1934. Today’s illustration comes from the 1950 reprint of that book.
The Dorchester Giant
Oliver Wendell Holmes
THERE was a giant in time of old,
A mighty one was he;
He had a wife, but she was a scold,
So he kept her shut in his mammoth fold;
And he had children three.
It happened to be an election day,
And the giants were choosing a king;
The people were not democrats then,
They did not talk of the rights of men,
And all that sort of thing.
Then the giant took his children three,
And fastened them in the pen;
The children roared; quoth the giant, “Be still!”
And Dorchester Heights and Milton Hill
Rolled back the sound again.
Then he brought them a pudding stuffed with plums,
As big as the State-House dome;
Quoth he, “There’s something for you to eat;
So stop your mouths with your ‘lection treat,
And wait till your dad comes home.”
So the giant pulled him a chestnut stout,
And whittled the boughs away;
The boys and their mother set up a shout.
Said he, “You’re in, and you can’t get out,
Bellow as loud as you may.”
Off he went, and he growled a tune
As he strode the fields along
‘Tis said a buffalo fainted away,
And fell as cold as a lump of clay,
When he heard the giant’s song.
But whether the story’s true or not,
It isn’t for me to show;
There’s many a thing that’s twice as queer
In somebody’s lectures that we hear,
And those are true, you know.
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.
Giant and mammoth have passed away,
For ages have floated by;
The suet is hard as a marrow-bone,
And every plum is turned to a stone,
But there the puddings lie.
And if, some pleasant afternoon,
You’ll ask me out to ride,
The whole of the story I will tell,
And you shall see where the puddings fell,
And pay for the punch beside.
Check out the Dorchester Historical Society’s online catalog at
http://dorchester.pastperfectonline.com/
The archive of these historical posts can be viewed on the blog at www.dorchesterhistoricalsocietyblog.org