[1126] The Shooting of Dan McGrew

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength
	of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks
	for the house.
There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves
	for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he'd do,
And I turned my head -- and there watching him was the lady that's
	known as Lou.

His eyes went rubbering round the room, and he seemed in a kind of daze,
Till at last that old piano fell in the way of his wandering gaze.
The rag-time kid was having a drink; there was no one else on the stool,
So the stranger stumbles across the room, and flops down there like a fool.
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then he clutched the keys with his talon hands -- my God! but that man
	could play.

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? --
Then you've a hunch what the music meant. . . hunger and night and the stars.

And hunger not of the belly kind, that's banished with bacon and beans,
But the gnawing hunger of lonely men for a home and all that it means;
For a fireside far from the cares that are, four walls and a roof above;
But oh! so cramful of cosy joy, and crowned with a woman's love --
A woman dearer than all the world, and true as Heaven is true --
(God! how ghastly she looks through her rouge, -- the lady that's
	known as Lou.)

Then on a sudden the music changed, so soft that you scarce could hear;
But you felt that your life had been looted clean of all that it once
	held dear;
That someone had stolen the woman you loved; that her love was a devil's lie;
That your guts were gone, and the best for you was to crawl away and die.
'Twas the crowning cry of a heart's despair, and it thrilled you through
	and through --
"I guess I'll make it a spread misere", said Dangerous Dan McGrew.

The music almost died away ... then it burst like a pent-up flood;
And it seemed to say, "Repay, repay," and my eyes were blind with blood.
The thought came back of an ancient wrong, and it stung like a frozen lash,
And the lust awoke to kill, to kill ... then the music stopped with a crash,
And the stranger turned, and his eyes they burned in a most peculiar way;
In a buckskin shirt that was glazed with dirt he sat, and I saw him sway;
Then his lips went in in a kind of grin, and he spoke, and his voice was calm,
And "Boys," says he, "you don't know me, and none of you care a damn;
But I want to state, and my words are straight, and I'll bet my poke
	they're true,
That one of you is a hound of hell. . .and that one is Dan McGrew."

Then I ducked my head, and the lights went out, and two guns blazed
	in the dark,
And a woman screamed, and the lights went up, and two men lay stiff and stark.
Pitched on his head, and pumped full of lead, was Dangerous Dan McGrew,
While the man from the creeks lay clutched to the breast of the lady that's
	known as Lou.

These are the simple facts of the case, and I guess I ought to know.
They say that the stranger was crazed with "hooch," and I'm not denying
	it's so.
I'm not so wise as the lawyer guys, but strictly between us two --
The woman that kissed him and -- pinched his poke -- was the lady that's
	known as Lou.

 	-- Robert W. Service

Note: 'Spread misere': also 'open misere', a bid in some whist derivatives
  involving the bidding player playing for no tricks (misere) and placing
  his cards face up on the table (spread).

As I mentioned a couple of poems ago, frontiers tend to produce some highly
vivid and colourful stories and narrative poems, and Service's tales of the
Yukon are surely among the best of the breed. An often overlooked
'character' in these tales is the land itself - Kipling's India, Paterson's
Australia, Twain's Mississippi all have an unmistakable presence that
permeates the tales and moulds and shapes their characters. Service, perhaps
more so than any of them, makes this explicit in his poems:

  Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
  And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
  With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
  A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
  While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars?
--
  Then you've a hunch what the music meant. . . hunger and night and the stars.

and it is this, more than anything else, that draws me to reread them time
and again, seldom without a shiver.

Today's tale of mysterious strangers, calculating women, and sudden violence
seems perfectly natural in its setting, and Service's verse hews and shapes
it without robbing it of any of its raw intensity. Definitely an immortal
poem - perhaps even more so than the haunting "Cremation of Sam McGee".

martin

Links:

  See Poem #781 for a collection of Service-related sites - I couldn't find
  anything interesting specifically related to today's poem.

  The current theme:
    http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/collections/58.html


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com

[this poem is archived, accessible and awaiting your comments at]
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1126.html
To subscribe, send a blank mail to <minstrels-subscribe@>.

From: <foshea@>

Thank you for the recitation week. 

My uncle in Ireland had a prologue to this poem. I could never find out
whether it was his own composition or whether it was Service's or had
been added by some music hall reciter. I can't recall the words but it
went something like this, in a kind of blank verse:

"Imagine a busy saloon in a seaside town somewhere in the south of
America. The bar is kept by a beautiful woman, helped by her husband,
who also plays music on the barroom piano. 

One evening, a whaling ship docks at the port and the crew with their
burly captain spend the evening drinking at the bar. The ship leaves
with first tide the next morning; the beautiful woman who kept the bar
also disappears. 

What follows is a sequel

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up ..."

Anyone help with this?

Incidentally, talking about this uncle. He had a lifelong stammer, but
once he started on a recitation, he went through it without a sign of
stammering. 

Frank O'Shea

From: KassieB@

My grandfather was one of the hopefuls at the Yukon gold rush. Although I was 
only about nine years old when he died, I remember quite well his tales of  
his life there. He could recite many of Robert Service's poems. Once, after 
reciting The Shooting of Dan McGrew, he told me that incidents of sudden 
violence weren't all that rare during the time he spent in the Yukon. "There 
were a lot of strange people up there," he said. "If the lights went out, 
everyone hit the floor."

By the time I was ten years old, I could recite most of The Cremation of Sam 
McGee. Yet that poem seemed rather tame to me compared to the story of the 
funeral of one of my grandfather's fellow miners. It seems that the gentleman 
died and his body froze solid in the Yukon cold. My grandfather and his 
buddies, while digging the grave and passing around the whiskey bottle, 
decided that lining the grave with pine boughs would be a nice gesture. In 
their zeal, they filled almost the entire grave with branches. When they 
lowered the frozen body of their friend into his grave, there wasn't quite 
enough room for it. With a little discussion and a lot more whiskey, they 
arrived at the obvious solution: They took turns jumping up and down on the 
frozen corpse in an attempt to fine tune the fit. I remember, after hearing 
my grandfather tell this story, asking him, "Did it work?" My serious, 
hard-working, non-drinking grandfather answered, "Who knows?" and burst out 
laughing.

Kathy

From: Fiona Thomson <fionat@>

Just wanted to say that this was perfect timing as BBC Radio 4 dedicated a
half hour programme to Robert Service and this poem on Sunday!
Fiona 

From: Gwbjeb1954@

My Father was a great admirer of Robert Service's  poems and I gave him the 
book of poems on his retirement date, 1968.   Dad memorized this poem as one of 
his favorites and used to recite it to  us, his family of three boys, and 
anyone else that wanted to listen.   As we grew older, Dad became the "Patriarch" 
of an annual fishing trip to  Flaming Gorge Reservoir by himself, his three 
sons, three cousins and three  family friends.  The highlight of the trip was, 
after a few drinks, Dad  would recite this poem do the delight of us and 
anyone else in the motel area  that heard it. I will say that he would recite it 
with meaning--wit,  seriousness, and matter-of-factly, where needed.  Dad died 
in 1984 at the  age of 85 but our memories of his rendition remain firmly fixed 
in our  memories.
    There was a parody written to this poem that was  quite bawdy, risque, 
however you want to put it.  Suffice it to say it was  meant for men's ears only 
(my mother knew of it, of course) so it also fit in  well with a bunch of 
guys acting like children again!  Dad also knew this  by heart and followed the 
Service poem with the parody.  We don't know for  sure but we believe Dad wrote 
the parody himself as he was good at writing the  poetry for us kids for 
school and a poem to each of us three sons covering the  main events of our lives. 
 We all cherish these poems!
    After our fishing trip last May (2003) when one of  our friends recited 
from memory another poem of Robert Service, The Cremation of  Sam McGee, I 
returned to home in California and thought I would do something of  the same this 
year.  Within a week I had written a poem that more or less  ended the saga of 
Dan McGrew and the parody.  This was done mostly at night  and then putting 
it on the computer either at night or the next morning.   Everything seemed to 
flow without much effort and I know it is not of the  quality of Service's or 
my Dad's effort but I think it will bring a chuckle to  the "gang" while at 
Flaming Gorge.  Sadly, two of my cousins have died in  recent years but I have 
added a comment on them in my poem.
    To me, Robert Service's poems bring to life the  good times of the 
century when things were perhaps more hard, but less stressful  and fast paced than 
life is today.  I believe our younger generation can  learn a lot from these 
poems.      
                                                             Thanks  for 
'listening',
                                                             Gordon  Brown

P.S.  I just read the comments by Frank O'Shea.  The parody of  which I spoke 
begins exactly as he said: " A bunch of the boys were  whooping it up in one 
of the Malumute Halls while the man at the music box  stealthily scratched his 
- - - - -".  Contact with Mr. O'Shea might help to  solve our mystery of who 
wrote the parody and I could send him a copy.  It  is barnyard humor but good!

From: ceisenhart <ceisenhart@>

From: "Cleveland W. Gibson" <cleve@>

From: ed@  Sun Jan 22 09:40:08 2006

The marvelous raconteur Jean Shepherd (see http://www.flicklives.com/)
once did one of his radio shows on "The Shooting of Dan McGrew".  Shep
(as he was known) said that "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in
the Malamute Saloon" was among the best first lines in all of
literature, including "It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times," "Call me Ishmael," and "I felt like a spy in my own home town."
(If you don't recognize the latter, it's the first line of Shep's book
"In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash".)

Anyway, this was one of those times when a radio show was so compelling
that my father and I sat in the car in the driveway for 45 minutes,
unwilling to miss a single word.  I was maybe 12 years old at the time,
which would be 1968 or so.