Annotation:London Waits
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LONDON WAITS. AKA and see "Past Three O'Clock." English, Air (3/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). ABC. This Waits' air was turned into a Christmas carol (as "Past Three O'Clock", words by George Ratcliffe Woodward, 1848–1934) and appears in some collections of those songs. It was published by Playford in his Supplement to the Third Edition of the Dancing Master (1657, where it appears simply as "The Waits"), and in Apollo's Banquet of 1669. Waits were paid musicians of towns and corporations, especially by the 15th and 16th centuries, and each group had some special tune to which they gave their name e.g. "Chester Waits," "Oxford Waits," "Colchester Waits." In the year 1575 the livery of the London Waits, states Chappell (1859), was described in a contemporary chronicle as "blue gowns, red sleeves and caps, every one having his silver collar about his neck."
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Barlow (Complete Country Dances from Playford's Dancing Master), 1985; No. 163, p. 46. Chappell (Popular Music of the Olden Time), vol. 2, 1859; pp. 10-11.
Recorded sources: