DOWNLOAD THE SONG SHEET
The Night That I Cremated Sam McGee (A)(PDF)
The Night That I Cremated Sam McGee (A)(WORD)
YOU CAN PLAY ALONG WITH STOMPIN' TOM using the (A) song sheet! I may transpose it to (G) for BUG Jam.
"The Cremation of Sam McGee" is among the most famous of Canadian Robert W. Service's poems. It was published in 1907 in Songs of a Sourdough. A "sourdough", in this sense, is a resident of the Yukon.) It concerns the cremation of a prospector who freezes to death near Lake Laberge (spelled "Lebarge" by Service), Yukon, Canada, as told by the man who cremates him. Robert Service based the poem on an experience of his roommate, Dr. Leonard S. E. Sugden, who had cremated a corpse in the firebox of the steamer Olive May. Although the poem was fiction, it was based on people and things that Robert Service actually saw in the Yukon. Lake Laberge is formed by a widening of the Yukon River just north of Whitehorse. The Alice May was based on the derelict stern-wheeler the Olive May that belonged to the Bennett Lake & Klondike Navigation Co. It was abandoned after it struck a rock near Tagish, which is about 50 kilometres (31 mi) south of Lake Laberge. Dr. Sugden used its firebox to cremate the body of Cornelius Curtin (who had died of pneumonia). William Samuel McGee was primarily a road builder but did indulge in some prospecting. Like others, McGee was in San Francisco, California, at the time of the Klondike Gold Rush and in 1898 left for the Klondike. In 1904, Service, who was working in the Canadian Bank of Commerce (the predecessor of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce) branch in Whitehorse, saw McGee's name on a form and used it in his poem as it was a rhyme for "Tennessee".