Competitive piper preserves Scottish tradition

Playing the bagpipes made Daniel MacQueen Caudill’s Carolina application stand out.

One application reader came to his sophomore recital, telling Caudill afterward, “I said, ‘I remember him! I gotta go see the piper.’”

Caudill has reached the highest amateur competitive level in the Eastern United States Pipe Band Association, looking to go pro in the future. After graduating in May with a bachelor’s degree in history and a minor in religious studies, he will pursue a career in social justice, probably legal work in the Research Triangle, with Presbyterian seminary another possibility.

Press the play button above to watch Caudill play “Hark the Sound.”

Caudill’s Scottish heritage is also at the center of his identity. He grew up in Scotland County, wore his first kilt at 1, visited Scotland in middle school, and piped in his fellow Fighting Scots for high school graduation.

Caudill knows all about the Highland Scot immigrants who settled in North Carolina’s Sandhills region in the 18th and 19th centuries. He did an Eagle Scout project on historic Stewartsville Cemetery, noticing headstones engraved with “native of Ballachulish” or “native of Glen Etive.”

“It seems cliché to say they were living here, but their home was somewhere else, but to a degree, that’s how these folks felt,” he said.

His father, Bill Caudill, is the director of the Scottish Heritage Center at St. Andrews University in Laurinburg. He also played competitively and is now EUSPBA’s president and a judge.

“In my pre-teens, I didn’t want to do what Dad was doing. That wasn’t cool,” Caudill said. “But a lot of the local culture and history is being lost. I decided to do this for other folks, not just myself. That’s what drives me to play and learn.”

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Playing the pipes is complicated: filling the bag with air, playing the melody on the chanter and keeping up the pressure to sustain the harmony through the drones. Caudill credits lung strength from piping with helping him overcome childhood asthma.

Those who only know a few bagpipe tunes — “Scotland the Brave,” “Highland Cathedral” and “Amazing Grace” — think of the instrument as mournful and limited. Caudill even joked at a recent concert that one of his selections was “Cat Birth in E Minor.”

“That’s what most American folks know, and yet it’s so much more vibrant and colorful and diverse than that,” he said.

In competitions, Caudill has to be ready to play from memory a wide array of tunes, including marches, reels and jigs, selected by a judge. “At a Highland Games like Grandfather Mountain, that’s a total of 17 tunes,” he said.

The Highland fit is also a must: kilt, jacket and vest, kilt hose and flashes, ghillie brogues laced halfway up the calf, a belt and sporran, what Caudill calls “a Scottish fanny pack.”

When practicing, “I’m not going to be a jerk and play in the dorms,” he said. But when he piped in the campus cemetery, too many passersby wanted to make him Instagram famous. University Presbyterian Church came to his rescue, offering him good acoustics and plenty of room.

He finds a creative outlet and solace in the bagpipes. “It’s important to maintain old traditions, but it’s also important to make them your own,” Caudill said. He wrote a hornpipe called “Sowing the Fields” to honor his paternal grandfather, a farmer who died in 2020.

Playing the pipes and painting with oils helped Caudill weather the loss of his older brother in 2023. “We were very close, and I’ve been tramping through the mud with all the grief stuff. But one of the positive things is the creative inspiration that’s come out of it.”