Ballad Of Basphemous Bill Lyrics - Hank Snow

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 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