Hank Snow Ballad of Basphemous Bill Lyrics:
I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous
Bill MacKie 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 dive mucklucks or patent shoon

On velvet tundra or virgin peak by glacier drift
or draw In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom by
avalanche fang or claw By battle murder or sudden
wealth by pestilence hooch or lead I swore on the
Book I would follow and look till I found my
tombless dead

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss and his mind
was mighty sot On a dinky patch with flowers and
grass in a civilized boneyard lot And where he
died or how he died it didn't matter a damn So
long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone
epigram

So I promised him and he paid the price in good
cheechako coin Which the same I blowed in that
very night down in the Tenderloin Then I painted a
three-foot slab of pine here lies poor Bill MacKie
And I hung it up on my cabin wall and waited for
Bill to die

Years passed away and at last one day came a squaw
with a story strange Of a long-deserted line of
traps way back of the Bighorn range Of a little
hut by the great divide and a white man stiff and
still Lying there by his lonesome self and I
figured it must be Bill

So I thought of the contract I'd made with him and
I took down from the shelf The swell black box
with the silver plate he'd picked out for hisself
And I packed it full of grub and hooch and I slung
it on the sleigh Then I harnessed up my team of
dogs and was off at dawn of day

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild when
it's sixty-nine below When the ice-worms wriggle
their purple heads through the crust of the pale
blue snow When the pine trees crack like little
guns in the silence of the wood And the icicles
hang down like tusks under the parka hood

When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off and
the sky is weirdly lit And the careless feel of a
bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit When the
mercury is a frozen ball and the frost-fiend
stalks to kill Well it was just like that that day
when I set out to look for Bill

Oh the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on
every hand As I blundered blind with a trail to
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find through that blank and bitter land Half dazed
half crazed in the winter wild with its grim
heartbraking woes And the ruthless strife for a
grip on life that only the sourdough knows

North by the compass North I pressed river and
peak and plain Passed like a dream I slept to lose
and I waked to dream again River and plain and
mighty peak and who could stand unawed As their
summits blazed he could stand undazed at the foot
of the throne of God

North aye North through a land accurst shunned by
the scouring brutes And all I heard was my own
harsh word and the whine of the malamutes Till at
last I came to a cabin squat built in the side of
a hill And I burst in the door and there on the
floor frozen to death lay Bill

Ice white ice like a winding-sheet sheathing each
smoke-grimed wall Ice on the stove-pipe ice on the
bed ice gleaming over all Sparkling ice on the
dead man's chest glittering ice in his hair Ice on
his fingers ice in his heart ice in his glassy
stare

Hard as a log and trussed like a frog with his
arms and legs outspread I gazed at the coffin I'd
brought for him and I gazed at the gruesome dead
And at last I spoke Bill liked his joke but still
goldarn his eyes A man had ought to consider his
mates in the way he goes and dies

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow
of the Pole With a little coffin six by three and
a grief you can't control Have you ever sat by a
frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin And
that seems to say you may try all day but you'll
never jam me in

I'm not a man of the quitting kind but I never
felt so blue As I sat there gazing at that stiff
and studying what I'd do Then I rose and I kicked
off the husky dogs that were nosing round about
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove and I
started to thaw Bill out

Well I thawed and I thawed for thirteen days but
it didn't seem no good His arms and his legs stuck
out like pegs as if they were made of wood Till at
last I said it ain't no use he's froze too hard to
thaw He's obstinate and he won't lie straight so I
guess I got to saw

So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs and I
laid him snug and straight In the little coffin he
picked hisself with the dinky silver plate And I
came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him
safely down Then I stowed him away in my Yukon
sleigh and I started back to town

So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow
grave and deep And there he's waiting the Great
Clean-up when the the Judgment sluice-heads sweep
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of
the Midnight Sun And sometimes I wonder if they
was the awful things I done

And as I sit and the parson talks expounding of
the Law I often think of poor old Bill and how
hard he was to saw
Lyrics: Ballad of Basphemous Bill, Hank Snow [end]