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

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Today, Erika Kyba reads the eerie conclusion of Robert W. Service’s “The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill,” and proposes some possible interpretations to its mysterious ending. 

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 continuing through Robert W. Services, the ballad of blasphemous bill. If you'll recall from last week, this poem tells a story that's a variation on the archetype of the Grateful Dead. But as you'll see in today's excerpt, Services Folktale has a very dark twist. We never learn why Blasphemous Bill is called Blastphemy. But strangely enough, it's Bill's corpse that gets treated in a blasphemous fashion. Blasphemy relates to treating something sacred with disrespect, and though this usually relates to

speaking about God with irreverence, you could also apply it to how you treat a corpse. When the narrator finds Bill's corpse, it's frozen so solid that he has no choice but to eventually saw his limbs off to fit him in the casket. Of course, it's not as if the narrator has much of a choice, but that doesn't prevent him from feeling haunted with guilt after the fact. It's no accident that Service chooses to end the poem in a church, as the narrator mules over his actions as a parson expounds the law. Respectful burial of the dead was a rather important part of Old Testament law,

and having to dismember someone to bury them, no matter how necessary it is, is not particularly respectful. Perhaps Service chooses this ending to the ballad of blasphemous Bill as a sort of carmic retribution, for whatever Bill did in life to earn his title. Or perhaps he only means to show how hard the life and death of a gold moiler was. Service wrote a lot of poetry about ordinary men traveling to harsh climates for the gold rush, hoping to strike out on luck.

However, their lives were often danger-filled and troubled, as we get a sense of in the Ballad of Blasphemous Bill. With all that said, let's dive in. The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill by Robert W. Service. Ice, white ice like a winding sheet, sheeting each smoke-grimed wall. Ice on the stovepipe, 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 trust 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 go darn 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 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 thawed for 13 days, but it didn't seem no good. His arms and legs stuck out like pegs as if they was 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 sought off Boar Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight. In the little coffin he picked his self with a dinky silver plate. And I came nine 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 graven deep, and there he's waiting the great clean-up when the judgment sluice heads sweep. and I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the land of the midnight sun, and sometimes I wonder if they was the awful things I'd 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. 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 Podcast. 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 reading Tennyson's Break, Break, Break.