"The Red Iron Ore" is an American ballad in E Minor and 6/8 time. It was collected by Franz Rickaby who was a Professor of English at the University of North Dakota. In 1917 Franz Rickaby set out to travel through the woods of northern America in search of songs. He travelled over 900 miles, mostly on foot, through North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan noting song texts by hand and using his fiddle to note the tunes. This was to be the first of several collecting trips, the last being a three week trip during the summer of 1923. Shortly afterwards Franz and his wife moved to Southern California. In 1917 Franz Rickaby had been diagnosed with rheumatic fever - actually a heart condition - which had gradually worsened. He continued to teach and work on his book, but he died in 1925. His collection Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy was published by Harvard University in 1926. Rickaby also collected "Pinery Boy" and "A Shantyman's Life". It was printed in Rickaby's Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (1926) and Lloyd and Rivera's Folk Songs of the Americas (1965).