The Rights of Man

The title comes from Tom Paine's book defending the French Revolution. It sold in huge numbers in England, was banned, and still passed from hand to hand in Scotland and Ireland. Northumbrian fiddler James Hill is sometimes named as the composer, but on thin evidence.

When it reached Chicago around 1905, the Irish musicians there took it for a new tune, though Sergeant James O'Neill remembered his father playing a version in Belfast decades before. Francis O'Neill got it too late for his 1903 book and printed it in 1907. The earliest known recording is from January 1910, by Scottish melodeon player Fred Cameron. He lost an arm in World War I and taught himself the cornet afterward.