The Shooting of Dan McGrew

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Shooting of Dan McGrew is a short, narrative poem by Robert W. Service, first published in The Songs of a Sourdough in 1907 in Canada.^[1]

The tale takes place in a Yukon saloon during the Yukon Gold Rush of the late 1890s. It tells of three characters: Dan McGrew, a rough-neck prospector; McGrew's sweetheart "Lou", a formidable pioneer woman; and a mysterious, weather-worn stranger who wanders into the saloon where the former are among a crowd of drinkers. The stranger buys drinks for the crowd, and then proceeds to the piano, where he plays a song that is alternately robust and then plaintively sad. He appears to have had a past with both McGrew and Lou, and has come to settle a grudge. Gunshots break out, and the reader is left to wonder if justice has been achieved.

The poet was a Scots-Englishman who came to Canada as a young adult, and was fascinated with the lives and landscapes of the Canadian Northwest where he went to work. Along with The Cremation of Sam McGee, this poem was arguably his best known. It was the basis of a 1998 novel, The Man From the Creeks, by Robert Kroetsch,^[2] a longtime admirer of Service's works. It was also the inspiration for the 1949 song "Dangerous Dan McGrew" by Guy Lombardo & his Royal Canadians.

[edit] Trivia

• The poem also inspired a Droopy cartoon: "The Shooting of Dan McGoo" (1945) by Tex Avery.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Service, Robert W. (1907). Songs of a Sourdough. Toronto: W. Briggs. LCCN 16-020848. 
2. ^ Kroetsch, Robert (2008). The Man From the Creeks. New Canadian Library. ISBN 0771095813.