The Lester Levy sheet music collection at Johns Hopkins has a copy of the
sheet music to the 1863 composition, "Down by the River Liv'd a Maiden," by
H. S. Thompson, on which "Clementine" by the mysterious Percy Montrose (or
Montross) was based.  It appears to have been a blackface minstrel song with
the usual mock-serious humor of the period.  A Victorian tear-jerker
original is probably thus ruled out.  The first verse reads:
Down by the river there lived a maiden
In a cottage built just 7 x 9;
And all around this lubly bower
The beauteous sunflower blossoms twine.
CHO: Oh my Clema, oh my Clema, Oh my darling Clementine,
Now you are gone and lost forever,
I'm dreadful sorry Clementine.

The tune looks quite different.
Norm Cohen

>On 26 Dec 1998, keiko wells wrote:
>
>> I am told that "Clementine" is meant to be funny by illustrating the
>stereotype of the gold miner; however, I cannot exactly understand the
>humor.  Is it funny because the miner was silly enough to take his
>daughter to the mining camp and lost her by the accident and soon later
>his own life as well? >
>



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