Mici ‘Cumbá’ O’Sullivan

(The Blind Piper)

Mici Cumbå Ö Süilleabhåin, also known as An Piobaire Cumbá and The Blind Piper, was born around 1840 at Skehanagh, near Castlecove. He was blind from an early age, probably from smallpox. The household he was born into was a musical one, as his father, uncle and grandfather were pipers. In addition his mother was a relative of Donnchadh O'Shea, the renowned piper from Loher. The Skehanagh O'Sullivans were regarded as the hereditary pipers of the Derrynane O'Connells, and thus enjoyed a position of local prominence. However, during Mici Cumbá's youth interest in piping begun to go into decline in Ireland as the popularity of the melodeon and concertina increased.

Micí Cumba emigrated to America around 1880 and settled in Worcester, near Boston. It is recorded that he had a wife and daughter there. In Boston he met and played with Patsy Touhy, the renowned Galway piper. Worcester was an industrial and multicultural city which attracted many immigrants from Ireland, France, Sweden, Poland and Italy. It is not known how Micí Cumbá made his living there.

In the 1890s Mici Cumbá returned to Kerry, apparently because he had been led to believe he had inherited a local fortune. This was not the case. His wife and daughter remained in America, and do not seem to have ever returned to Ireland. His arrival back to Ireland, however, coincided with the Gaelicising programme of Conradh na Gaeilge, and during the 1890s both the Feis Ceoil and Oireachtas na Gaeilge were founded. Both of these festivals aimed to conserve traditional music and generate a renaissance of Irish arts and culture, and one of the consequences of this movement was a national revival of interest in piping. Arising from this resurgence Piper's Clubs were founded in Cork and Dublin in the late 1890s.

In this cultural context Micl Cumbá became a figure of some interest. He was by now an aging piper, from whom a new generation of pipers could potentially learn. In addition, as a living link with the Iveragh piping tradition, which had been very strong in the early nineteenth century, he was the last living member of the old-school of Kerry pipers. As a result he was invited to travel to Cork in 1898 to play at the newly-formed Piper's Club, where a celebration was held in his honour. There he met the renowned Captain Francis O'Neill, of Chicago, was has been described as the greatest individual influence on the evolution of Irish traditional dance music in the twentieth century. O'Neill recorded several of his pieces. In the following year, and again in 1901, Micí Cumba travelled to Dublin and competed at the Feis Ceoil, where his playing was recorded on an Edison phonograph wax cylinder. The 1899 recording survives and appears to be the first ever sound recording of Irish traditional music.

Micí Cumbá's presence at these events in Dublin and Cork demonstrated that his reputation as a piper were valued well beyond his native south Kerry. Something of the unusual character and personality of Mici Cumbá is recorded in the writings of Captain Francis O'Neill and Sr M. Columbån. O'Neill described him as an eccentric individual who was very superstitious, was overly fearful of the fairies, and 'had a head full of queer notions'. Sr Columbán's recollections of Micí are quite different, however. She was born in the Caherdaniel area, and met the piper several times during her youth. She wrote her memories of him in Irish in the late 1970s, when she was in her eighties in a convent in Iceland. She recalled him as afear cufosach with a long beard who was always accompanied on his travels around the area by a small dog. She wrote

that he was highly regarded locally by everyone, bhi cionn an domhain again go léir air, and that he was of noble character: bhi uaisleacht thar an gcoitcheann a' baint leis. She stated that he often called to her house for a meal, and that he frequently played music with her uncle, Dånall de Barra, in Derrynane Beg townland: chitear dom inniu é, é féin agus Mici cois na tine m6ire agus an bheirt acu ag seinm ceoil do phdcaifolamha.

Sr Columbån's memories of Micí Cumbá playing music in local houses are not the only ones that survive. The late Paddy 'Moulcore' O'Sullivan, for instance, who died in 2011, recalled that his father spoke of the piper playing in their home in Mastergeehy. He stated that Micí played with his grandfather, Eoin, and that 'even when my father was an old man he would often speak of the great player Cumba was and how he could remember his music still.'

Unfortunately, however, Micl Cumbá's final years turned out to be tragic ones. He fell into poverty and, in 1908, he entered the workhouse at Bahaghs, near Cahersiveen. On his way there he played his pipes for the last time, at Loher. The workhouses, by this stage, were places for people that society had rejected — the poorest of the poor, the abandoned children, the old and infirm, the tramps and the lunatics. Micí remained in Bahaghs workhouse for the rest of his life, and he died there in 1915. He was buried in an unmarked grave at nearby Sugreana. His music has not been forgotten, however, and his distinctive recordings, with their unique style, are still listened to by uilleann pipers throughout the world.

Micl Cumbá' 3rd from left