Professor John Cummings (c. 1828-after 1913) was an Irish piper. A son of Patrick Cummins ( fl. 1820s), Cummings was raised near

Athenry Athenry (; ) is a town in County Galway, Ireland, which lies east of Galway city. Some of the attractions of the medieval town are its town wall, Athenry Castle, its priory and its 13th century street-plan. The town is also well known by virtu ...

, where his family had performed and taught music for generations. The family name was originally rendered Cummins but the spelling was changed to Cummings in his lifetime. He was given the

honor Honour (British English) or honor (American English; see spelling differences) is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of social teaching and of personal ethos, that manifests itself as a ...

ary title of ''Professor'' in light of the esteem people held his musical abilities. Cummings worked in England from about 1850 to 1892, in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

where he worked in building and became friends with the piper/pipemaker Michael Egan, and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, "where he had much to do with the handling and care of horses." In 1892 he left England for

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, where he lived with his daughter, Mrs. Hogan. Only in 1912, as a result of the

Gaelic Revival The Gaelic revival ( ga, Athbheochan na Gaeilge) was the late-nineteenth-century Romantic nationalism, national revival of interest in the Irish language (also known as Gaelic) and Irish Gaelic culture (including Irish folklore, folklore, Iri ...

did he come to a wide audience; previously he performed privately. He was held, despite his age, to be the equal of

Patsy Touhey Patsy is a given name often used as a diminutive of the feminine given name Patricia or sometimes the masculine name Patrick, or occasionally other names containing the syllable "Pat" (such as Cleopatra, Patience, Patrice, or Patricia). Among It ...

and Barney Delaney.

References

* ''Irish pipers of distinction'', Chapter XXII, ''Irish Minstrels and Musicians'', by Capt.

Francis O'Neill Francis O'Neill (August 28, 1848 – January 26, 1936) was an Irish-born American police officer and collector of Irish traditional music. His biographer Nicholas Carolan referred to him as "the greatest individual influence on the evolution of ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, 1913.

External links

* http://billhaneman.ie/IMM/IMM-XXII.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Cummings, Professor Patrick 1820s births 19th-century Irish male musicians Musicians from County Galway Irish male uilleann pipers Year of death missing Irish emigrants to the United States People from Athenry 19th-century Irish uilleann pipers 20th-century Irish uilleann pipers 20th-century Irish male musicians