Sitting proudly over looking the Royal Mile, on top of Castle Rock sits Edinburgh Castle. This site has a history dating back to the 12th century, where over the centuries a castle or defensive structure of some kind has resided. Over the centuries, as old buildings fell and new ones were constructed, certain features became forgotten and lost to time.
This brings us to the story of the lost piper boy.
This sad story dates back several hundred years when a number of tunnels were found under the castle that seemed to lead towards Holyrood House, the royal palace that stands at the bottom of the Royal Mile.
During renovations, forgotten and mysterious tunnels were discovered under the castle. Where did they go? What was their purpose? Was there treasure down there? Many questions were raised about the tunnels, but there was only one wee problem; the opening to these tunnels was small, too small for the soldiers of the castle to fit down to investigate.
So small was the entrance that they decided the only way they would find the answers they were seeking was to send one of the young servant lads down to investigate.
Armed with a candlelit lamp and a set of bagpipes, they instructed the lad to play the bagpipes loudly as he walked along the tunnel; this way, the soldiers could follow a map on the street level above, keeping track by following the sound of the pipes.
In the dead of night, the lad began to play as he marched along the tunnel. The soldiers followed the eerie and haunting sound from the castle and down the Royal Mile. Their plan was working flawlessly as they made their way down the royal mile, seemingly in the direction of the palace at the bottom of the hill.
That is until, less than half way down the Royal Mile, near the Tron Kirk, suddenly, the pipes stopped without warning. The soldiers waited and waited and waited, thinking the boy was just taking a break and expecting for the pipes to sound and bellow loudly again. But the pipes never sounded; they were waiting one hour, two hours, three hours, but nothing. What could have happened? What was going on?
The soldiers made their way back to the castle, thinking the lad made his way back up the tunnel; maybe some scared him to reverse his course, but the guards posted at the entrance said he never exited the tunnel.
In the days following, they were able to send a small search party into the tunnel, but this raised more questions than answers, for you see, no trace of the boy or his bagpipes was ever found.
Eventually, they sealed up the entrance.
Some say, on a still, moonlit night, if you begin to walk from Edinburgh’s Castle and down the Royal Mile, you can hear the faint, haunting sound of the bagpipes under your feet as the piper boy makes his way down the tunnel under the Royal Mile once again.
Some believed that hearing the sound of the boys pipes was an ominous warning, signalling an imminent attack on the castle or some other disaster about to befall the city.