WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Poetry Fix: The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Today, Erika Kyba reads an excerpt from Robert W. Service’s “The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill,” a poet’s take on the Grateful Dead archetype.

Welcome to the Poetry Fix on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm your host, Erica Kaiba, bringing you your weekly fix of poetry from across time. Today we're reading Robert W. Services' The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill. If you're familiar with Service's other famous poem tale, the cremation of Sam McGee, you'll find that this one has a lot of thematic similarities. It's about a man who makes a vow to bury his friend, the titular Blasphemous Bill, once he passes. And once he hears that blasphemous Bill is deceased, he has to set off to find him. This kind of story is a variation on the Grateful Dead archetype in Folktales,

where a traveler must give an abandoned corpse a proper burial. With all that said, let's dive in. The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill by Robert W. Service. 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 of day or under the peak-faced moon, In cabin or dance hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patten shun, 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 sought, on a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized bonyard 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 Chichaco 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 Mackay, and I hung it up on my cabin wall, and I waited for Bill to die. Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange of a long-dime.

deserted line of traps way back of the big horn 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 picked out for himself, 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 the dawn of day. You know what it's like in the Yukon Wild when it's 69 below? When the iceworms 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 stovepipe 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, O the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand, as I blundered, blind, with a trail to find through that blank and bitter land. Half-dazed, half-crazed in the winter wild with its grim, heartbreaking 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 on odd? As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God.

North, aye, north, through a land accursed, shunned by the scorning brutes, and all I heard was my own harsh word and the wine of the Malamutes, till at last I came into 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. You've been listening to The Poetry Fix with Erica Kaiba.

If you enjoyed this episode, consider following The Poetry Fix on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple Podcasts. And if you have any poems you want to see in a future episode, email your suggestions to the Poetry Fix at gmail.com. Join me next week, and we'll be continuing our journey through the Ballad of Blasphemous Bill.