The variations in the detailed text can go on forever,
I guess, but in my misspent youth in Minnesota, in the 30's,
we used the partial lines below:

"sat in her hammock and played her guitar"
"He sat down beside her and smoked his cigar"
"he told her he loved her"
"she got consumption and she ups and died"
      or sometimes
"they were to be married, but she ups and died"
"he sat on her tombstone and laughed till he cried"
"she went to Heaven, and flip-flop she flied"
"But he went the other place, and sssss-led and fried"
"moral of this story is, never tell-lies"
    (This last was said or sung as one word, "telllize" to meet
    the scansion.)

I don't recall the song having any account of just how he
died. (This was, after all, seventy-plus years ago.) And
we didn't do the triple-echo thing at the end of the verses.

Dave Oesterreich