More than two hundred years ago, the bagpipes were prohibited as

Buskers’ playing Scotland’s national instrument, the bagpipes, has been banned from the country’s most famous street, the Royal Mile, in Edinburgh, because of complaints about the noise. The Royal Mile remains a residential street, and police have received hundreds of complaints that the skirl of the bagpipes is an anti-social nuisance. They can be so loud they were banned 250 years ago as a weapon of war. Regular pipers have now had to sign contracts restricting where they can play, and they have been warned their instruments could be confiscated. There will be an exception. Some bagpipers will be allowed on the Royal Mile during Edinburgh’s Music and Arts Festival in August.