A splendid trad performance of 'Red Iron Ore,' by Stanley Baby of Toronto. Baby learned the song from his father, who had shipped in the Great Lakes schooner "E. C. Roberts" in the mid 1870s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inVD1Vg9_uA

This "Derry Down" is different from the usual British form, but still recognizable.

Ivan Walton collected a text and tune of "Red Iron Ore" from 84-year-old "Ves" Ray of Port Huron. Mich., in 1934. Ray had also sailed on the "Roberts" in the '70's, and believed the song had been composed by his shipmate, Billy Clark of Buffalo, who had also written "dozens of others."

Crazily, Ray's tune is more like "Vilikins" than "DDD."

It may be that the modal tune of "DDD" drifted increasingly toward the major "Vilikins" family during the 19th century.

In a similar vein, I know a lady who ordinarily can carry a tune well, but who told me twenty years ago that the only difference she heard between "Mademoiselle from Armentieres" (major) and "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" (modal) was in the refrains.

And in fact, Robert W. Gordon wrote that, as a boy in Maine in the 1890s, he and friends sang the immediate forebear of "Mademoiselle" to the tune of "When Johnny."