Ballad of Blasphemous Bill – Hear Buckwheat Donahue Bring It to Life

The Story Behind The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

Robert Service had a knack for writing about the harsh realities of life (and death) in the North, and The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill is one of his grimmest—and funniest—takes on the subject.

If you spend any time in Alaska, you’ll hear the old saying: “The cold doesn’t care who you are.” And that’s what this poem is all about. When winter sets in—real winter, the kind where temperatures drop to 50 below and everything freezes solid—even the toughest men can’t fight it.

Service had heard stories of prospectors who died alone in the wilderness, their bodies frozen stiff before they could be buried. That idea stuck with him. He imagined a man—Blasphemous Bill Mackay—who had spent his whole life raising hell but made his best friend promise him one thing:

"If I die first, don’t let me freeze. Bury me proper."

Easier said than done.

This poem is gritty, dark, and full of the kind of gallows humor that you need to survive in the Far North. Because when the temperature drops low enough, even something as simple as digging a grave becomes impossible.

The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

By Robert W. Service (1907)

I took a contract to bury the body
Of blasphemous Bill MacKay,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever
The manner of death he die—
Whether he die in the light o’ day
Or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or trail,
In March or the month of June.

Whether he die the death of a dog
Or be sniped by a savage foe,
And buried according to Hoyle and the law
Of the land where the cornflowers grow;
Or whether he be done to death
By malice or accident,
And carried out on the virgin snow
With a coffin of chunks of tent.

I swore on my palsied oath, I swore
Till my throat was dry and hoarse,
That with him to the last, the worst and the best
I’d ride as a black chief’s horse.
And, friends and all, with hand on heart,
In front of the altar high,
Made me repeat that sacred vow,
So help me, God, to die.

Well, he died in the snow, a week ago,
And I swear, by the frost-blue sky,
I staked him out like a Yukon dog,
And I left him there to lie.
I left him there in his frozen lair,
A mile and a half away,
And I covered him up with a robe of care,
And a mound of the gleaming spray.

Yet I thought of him often and thought of his oath,
And wondered if, where he lay,
He was sleeping sound in his bed of ice,
Or slowly rotting away.
And I took to drinking, which stilled my woe,
And an oath is an oath, they say;
So I packed my gun and I made to go
And bury the man I swore to.

I went and I found him—blind and dumb,
And frozen and hard as stone,
And I dug a hole with a hunting knife,
And I buried him all alone.
No priest to read, no mourners near,
No friend with a soul to save;
Just me and my dog and the light of a star,
And a hole in the frozen grave.

And there he lies in his icy shroud,
As snug as a bivalve shell;
And me, I’ve broken my sacred vow,
But I reckon it’s just as well.
For the claim is mine, and the gold is fine,
And there’s none to dispute my right;
Yet I often think that the last of Bill
Is a sorry, forsaken sight.