"The Shantyman's Life" is an American ballad from the lumbermen of the northern forests. A note on an early broadside printing of this song about the hardships of winter logging work says it was composed by George W. Stace of "La Crosse Valley, Wis[consin]". Franz Rickaby collected a version from Albert Hannah of Bemidji, Minnesota. Rickaby noted that “shanty boy” was a more common term than "lumberjack" among old time loggers who worked in the live-in winter camps where the bunkhouse was referred to as the "shanty". Rickaby also collected "The Red Iron Ore" and "The Pinery Boy". It was printed in Dean's The Flying Cloud And 150 Other Old Time Poems and Ballads: A Collection of Old Irish Songs, Songs of the Sea and Great Lakes, The Big Pine Woods, The Prize Ring and Others (1922). Rickaby's Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (1926), Rickaby (Dykstra and Leary ed.) Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era (2017), Peters' Folk Songs out of Wisconsin (1977), Doerflinger's Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman (1972), Gray's Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks (1916), Fowke and Johnston's Folk Songs of Canada (1954), Creighton's Traditional Songs of Nova Scotia (1960), Mackenzie's Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia (1963), Cazden, Haufrecht and Studer's Folk Songs of the Catskills (1982), Warner's Traditional American Folk Songs from the Anne & Frank Warner Collection (1984), Sandburg's The American Songbag (1927), Botkin's A Treasury of New England Folklore (1965), Beck's Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks (1941), Beck's They Knew Paul Bunyan (1956) and Beck's Lore of the Lumber Camps (1948). It is in the Roud Folk Song Index as #838. It was recorded by Pierre La Dieu on "The Shanty Man's Life" (1928), Pete Seeger on Champlain Valley Songs (1960) and Dave Van Ronk on Inside Dave Van Ronk (1964).