A hurly burly is a hubbub or commotion. There’s the hurly burly of the schoolyard, or the hurly burly of a food fight. When there’s a hurly burly, things have gone totally higgledy-piggledy.
When something loud, unruly, or chaotic is going on, there’s a hurly burly. It’s an old-fashioned British word. In fact, a witch in Shakespeare’s Macbeth says, “When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.” A hurly burly isn’t always as serious as war, though, it’s an informal word for a disturbance, hoo-ha, kerfuffle, a real to-do, the kind that wouldn’t be welcome in a library. Any hurly burly is noisy in some way.