A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Waits, The
WAITS, THE. A name given, from time immemorial, to the little bands of rustic Musicians who sing and play Carols, by night, in country places, at Christmas-time; and still very commonly applied to their less unsophisticated representatives, in larger towns, and even in London. The word is a very old one, and Bailey (Etym. Dict., 1790) defines it thus—'A sort of Musick, or Musicians [either of waiting, because they attend on Magistrates, Officers, etc., in Pomps, and Processions; or, of guet, a Watch, or guetter, to watch, Fr., because they keep a Sort of Watch a-Nights].' Mr. Skeat (Etym. Dict.) says that 'Wait' is identical with 'watch' and 'wake,' and that 'a wait' is one who is awake for the purpose of playing at night.'
The title of 'The Waits' has also been given, for reasons which no one has hitherto been able to ascertain, to a little Fa-la, for four voices, by Jeremy Savile, a Composer who appears to have been popular about the time of the Restoration, but is now known only by some Songs printed in Playford's 'Select Musicall Ayres and Dialogues,' in 1653, and the piece in question, which first appeared in 1667, in Playford's 'Musical Companion'—a new edition, with extensive additions, and a subsidiary title, of Hilton's 'Catch that catch can.'
The Madrigal Society concludes all its meetings with Savile's Fa-la; and the custom has been adopted by the Bristol Madrigal Society, and many other provincial associations of like character. The oldest mode of performance on record was that of singing the Music four times through; first f, then p, then pp, and lastly ff, always, of course, without accompaniment. Mr. T. Oliphant wrote some words to it, to avoid the monotony of the continuous Fa-la,—
Let us all sing, merrily sing,
Till echo around us responsive shall ring.