SEARCH HERE: BROWSE 409412 LYRICS BY ARTIST/BAND NAME: #A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z SITE MENU Last Updates Request Lyrics Submit / Correct Popularity Charts VISITORS Login / Register Your Thoughts My Playlists [ More Hank Snow lyrics ] add to playlist     see a mistake?    comment Artist/Band: Hank Snow Lyrics for Song: The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill Lyrics for Album: The Singing Ranger, Vol. 3 [Bear Family (Germany)] [1994] (Robert W. Service) 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... Album Lyrics: The Singing Ranger, Vol. 3 [Bear Family (Germany)] [1994] Hank Snow "The Singing Ranger, Vol. 3 [Bear Family (Germany)] [1994]" 1. I Love You Because 2. I Care No More 3. Fraulein 4. Return to Me 5. Mansion on the Hill 6. Limbo Rock 7. Tammy 8. Wheels 9. Tiptoeing 10. Poison Love 11. Hold Me Tight 12. I Saw the Light 13. Difficult 14. Little Stranger (In a Manger) 15. Christmas Roses 16. Silent Night 17. C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s 18. White Christmas 19. Frosty the Snowman 20. God Is My Santa Claus 21. I Ain't Been Anywhere 22. Rome Wasn't Built in a Day 23. Invisible Hands 24. Sweet Hour of Prayer 25. Jesus Wept 26. These Things Shall Pass 27. His Hands 28. Farther Along 29. Gloryland March 30. I Saw a Man 31. This Train 32. I See Jesus 33. Shopworn 34. I'm Glad I'm on the Inside Looking Out 35. I'll Go Marching Into Glory 36. How Big Is God 37. Lord's Way of Saying Goodnight 38. Promised to John 39. My Adobe Hacienda 40. No Letter Today 41. I Dreamed of An Old Love Affair 42. For Sale 43. Rose of Old Monterey 44. Moonlight and Skies 45. You and My Old Guitar 46. Down the Old Road to Home 47. I'm Sorry We Met 48. Teardrops in My Heart 49. Ridin' Home 50. Heartbreak Trail 51. Cool Water 52. Tumbling Tumbleweeds 53. At the Rainbow's End 54. Chant of the Wanderer 55. On the Rhythm Range 56. Following the Sun All Day 57. Blue Side of Lonesome 58. Green, Green Grass of Home 59. Once More You're Mine Again 60. There Goes My Everything 61. All the Time 62. It Kinda Reminds Me of Me 63. Blue, Blue Day 64. He Dropped the World in My Hands 65. Call of the Wild 66. There's a Star Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere 67. You're the Reason 68. It's a Little More Like Heaven 69. Galway Bay 70. Lili Marlene 71. Geisha Girl 72. Melba from Melbourne 73. Cuba Rhumba 74. Queen of Draw Poker Club 75. Now Is the Hour 76. In the Misty Moonlight 77. From a Jack to a King 78. She Wears My Ring 79. Mary Ann Regrets 80. White Silver Sands 81. Lonesome 7-7203 82. Gonna Find Me a Bluebird 83. Sweet Lies 84. Handcuffed to Love 85. Bummin' Around 86. I've Cried a Mile 87. You Take the Future (And I'll Take the Past) 88. Flying South 89. Miami Snow 90. At the First Fall of Snow 91. You're as Welcome as the Flowers in May 92. January 93. Springtime in the Rockies 94. Roses in the Snow 95. Beyond the Reef 96. Trade Winds 97. Don't Sing Aloha When I Go 98. Oahu Rose 99. The Wayward Wind 100. Walking the Last Mile 101. Old Rover 102. Put Your Arms Around Me 103. Little Joe 104. Cross the Brazos at Waco 105. Nuevo Laredo 106. Adios Amigo 107. Maria Elena 108. Senorita Rosalita 109. Dangerous Dan McGrew 110. Ballad of One Eyed Mike 111. My Friends 112. I Wish My Heart Could Talk 113. Wreck of the Old '97 114. Crazy Little Train of Love 115. Blue Yodel, No. 10 116. Father Time and Mother Love 117. Rockin' Rollin' Ocean [With Wave Effect] 118. Rockin' Rollin' Ocean [Without Wave Effect] 119. Casey's Washerwoman Boogie [Instrumental] 120. Hawaiian Sunset [Instrumental] 121. The Man Who Robbed the Bank at Santa Fe 122. The Texas Plains 123. Patanio (The Pride of the Plains) 124. A Legend in My Time 125. A Petal from a Faded Rose 126. The Change of the Tide 127. Mockin' Bird Hill 127. If It's Wrong to Love You 127. The Blue Canadian Rockies 127. Sonny Boy [Instrumental] 127. Unchained Melody [Instrumental] 127. Beautiful Dreamer [Instrumental] 127. Brahms' Lullaby [Instrumental] 127. Blue Tango [Instrumental] 127. Dark Moon [Instrumental] 127. I Can't Stop Loving You [Instrumental] 127. The Convict and the Rose [Instrumental] 127. The Waltz You Saved for Me 127. Lay My Head Beneath a Rose [Instrumental] 127. Whispering Hope [Instrumental] 127. Sentimental Journey [Instrumental] 127. Am I Losing You? [Instrumental] 127. I Get the Blues When It Rains [Instrumental] 127. Sweet Marie [Instrumental] 127. Birth of the Blues [Instrumental] 127. The Christmas Cannonball 127. A Letter to Santa Claus 127. The Face on the Barroom Floor 127. The Cremation of Sam McGee 127. The Spell of the Yukon 127. The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill 127. The Last Mile of the Way 127. Dear Lord, Remember Me 127. The Runt 127. The Prisoner's Dream 127. Mother I Thank You (For the Bible You Gave) 127. Rocking Alone in an Old Rocking Chair 127. To You Sweetheart, Aloha 127. My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii 127. On the Beach in Waikiki 127. Pearly Shells 127. The Whispering Tradewinds [Instrumental] 127. Among My Souvenirs [Instrumental] 127. The Seasons 127. All Nite Cafe 127. The Tip of My Fingers 127. A Wound Time Can't Erase 127. The Name of the Game Was Love