"The Shooting of Dan McGrew" is a narrative poem by British-Canadian writer Robert W. Service, first published in The Songs of a Sourdough in 1907 in Canada.
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.
The poet was a Scotsman 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.
It was also the inspiration for the 1949 song "Dangerous Dan McGrew" by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians.
The poem was recited by Miss Marple in the 1964 film Murder Most Foul, as her audition to join a theatrical troupe.