Volume 10 81
of making a promise. The promise on its face first
seems distasteful, maybe even gruesome. But, As
Cap says, “A promise made is a debt unpaid.” It is
that notion of following through, of honoring the
commitment, that comes to the forefront. The poem
shows in a humorous way the effect of keeping a
promise.
Source:Bill Wiles, in an essay for Poetry for Students,Gale,
2001.
Carl Mowery
Mowery holds a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois
University in Rhetoric and Composition and Amer-
ican Literature. He has written numerous essays
for the Gale Group. In the following, Mowery ex-
amines the poetic style and imagery found in the
ballad as well as the poetic techniques used by
Robert W. Service.
“The Cremation of Sam McGee” reflects
Robert W. Service’s knowledge of the Yukon ter-
ritory, where he lived much of his early adult life.
It was there that he was exposed to the rough and
tumble world of the gold miners and other out-
doorsmen of the Canadian northwest. “The only so-
ciety I like,” he once said, “is that which is rough
and tough—and the tougher the better. That’s
where you get down to bedrock and meet human
people.” Those kinds of images, experiences and
people fill much of his poetic output. His ballads
vibrate with the sounds and smells of the frontier
saloons, with the piano playing in the background,
the men and women talking and arguing, and the
occasional gun fight erupting. His verses reflect his
personal search for balance between the social life
of the mining camps and the solitude of the north
woods.
His most famous ballad, “The Shooting of Dan
McGrew,” is a serious tale of intrigue and treach-
ery ending with the deaths of McGrew and the
stranger who did the shooting. This ballad, first
published in 1907 in a collection called Songs of a
Sourdoughand later reissued with the title The
Spell of the Yukon,was inspired by an actual event.
Service had gone into a bank where he worked dur-
ing the day looking for a quiet place to write. He
did not tell the night watchman he was coming, and
the startled watchman shot at Service, missing his
head by inches.
Included in the Songs of a Sourdoughcollec-
tion was “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” a light-
hearted ballad with an unexpected twist at the end.
A ballad is a poetic form that tells a tale, usually
in a very rhythmic fashion. These kinds of poems
are not filled with deep symbolism; rather, they are
straightforward explications of a story, serious or
comedic.
“The Cremation of Sam McGee” opens with a
stanza that establishes the tone of the work, giving
it a mysterious air that the following tale will then
unravel. The stanza is repeated at the close of the
ballad, and thereby frames it. When it was pub-
lished, Service instructed that this stanza be printed
in italics for added emphasis, in much the same way
that Rudyard Kipling used italics to set apart and
add emphasis to stanzas in many of his poetic
pieces. Service used this same publication practice
in other verses, including “The Ballad of One-eyed
Mike.” Such stanzas function like the choruses of
ancient Greek dramas. While they are important to
the telling of the story, they are not directly con-
nected to it. Instead, they offer background or other
information that helps the reader understand the lit-
erary work more completely. For Service, these
mini-choruses set the tone and establish the mood
of the verse they bracket.
The stories in Service’s ballads are very easy
to follow. He was deliberately anti-intellectual and
did not include in his verse obscure imagery and
hidden meanings. But this fact does not make his
poetry any the less important in the history of po-
etry, nor does it make other poetry any more im-
portant. It just makes their styles different. Ser-
vice’s obituary in the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraphof
September 16, 1958, stated: “He was a people’s
poet. To the people he was great. They understood
him, and knew that any verse carrying the by-line
of Robert W. Service would be a lilting thing, clear,
clean and power-packed, beating out a story with
a dramatic intensity that made the nerves tingle.”The Cremation of Sam McGee‘They understood
him, and knew that [his]
verse ... would be a lilting
thing, clear, clean and
power-packed, beating out
a story with a dramatic
intensity that made the
nerves tingle.’ ”