they were
also sometimes appointed to keep a sort of Watch at night, and were then
generally decorated with superb dresses, splendid cloaks, &c. In Rymers'
_Fardera_ there is an account of such an establishment, of the
minstrels and _waites_ who were in the service of the court of
Edward IV., wherein is mentioned "a _waite_ that nighteleye, from
Michaelmas to Shrove Thorsday, pipeth the watch within this court;" "i.
fewer times, in the somere nightes iij. times." Todd derives the term
waits from _wahts_, (Goth.) nocturnal itinerant musicians,
(Beaumont and Fletcher;) Bayley, on account of their waiting on
magistrates, &c.; or of _guet_, a watch; or from the French
_guetter_, to watch, because anciently they kept a sort of watch a
night. From what I have narrated, then, it appears that the persons
formerly called waites, or waits, were _musical_ watchmen, the word
implying _obees_. They were, in fact, minstrels, at first annexed
to the king's court, who sounded the watch every night; and in towns
paraded the streets during winter, to prevent theft, &c. At Exeter they
were set up, with a regular salary, in 1400; and although suppressed by
the Puritans, were reinstated in 1660. M.A. Boyer, in his _French and
English Dictionary_, Rivington. 1747, under the word _waits_, s.
has the following: "in the French, _sorte de hautbois_, (ho-boy,)
corresponding with the signification of the term waits, as itinerant or
wandering (music or) musicians. These nocturnal perambulators, it seems,
were anciently called, as they now are, waits; and persons, bearing the
same name, still go about our streets during the month of December,
(previous to the 25th.) Whatsoever may be the reasons or the motives of
those (maunderers) who _now_ call _themselves waits_, I must
leave for the consideration of such as are favoured with their visits. I
am of opinion it can have neither allusion nor similitude to the
Christmas carol as some have suggested, which was an imitation, however
humble, of 'The glory to God on high,' &c., as sung by the angels who
hovered over the fields of Bethlehem on the morning of our Saviour's
nativity." It is true, indeed, that our modern angels, _the waits_
of 1897, have _hovered about_, and _they may_ (without a pun)
be styled angels (of darkness), not only on account of the watch they
keep _a nights_, but on account of those _spirit-uous propensities_,
for the attainment of which, principally, some have supposed, _we_ are