“I try to live out the whimsy of this folksong. It is a provocative whimsy -- a dangerous whimsy, that would tie the ghost of a drowned girl, like the string of a balloon, to a humming and legborne melody. I didn't realize what this song was about for a long time. I just loped through the refrain, which, sung thoughtlessly, sounds perfunctory and slow, as old as a river, like the nearly-forgotten cause of some centuries-old haunting, passed through generations in the form of words with whose reciting we strum banjos and fail to sympathize: "Oh, my darling; oh, my darling..." Clementine tripped and died. Her father gave his love for her to her little sister. YouTube comments on this song are largely, "I will NEVER sing this to my child" -- because people look up the lyrics to lull their kids to sleep. Like the father, we've whistled Clementine away. The song's a warning against naïveté, with Oscar Wilde shock value, and a plea for sentimentality wherever there's none.”

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