One day while performing routine chores, Clementine trips and falls into a raging current and drowns, as her lover is unable to swim and declines to attempt to rescue her.

The lyrics by Percy Montrose were issued as sheet music by Oliver Ditson & Co of Boston in 1884,[2] based on an earlier song called "Down by the River Liv'd a Maiden", printed in 1863.

In his book South from Granada, Gerald Brenan claims that the melody was from an old Spanish ballad, made popular by Mexican miners during the California Gold Rush.

No particular source is cited to verify that the song he used to hear in the 1920s in a remote Spanish village was not an old text with new music, but Brenan states in his preface that all the information in his book has been checked reasonably well.

Bobby Darin recorded a version of the song in 1960, with lyrics credited to Woody Harris,[7] in which Clementine is reimagined as a 299-pound woman.