Peter Greenfield's question about "Richard le Wayte" hasn't been
answered by anyone else, so (with some trepidation) here goes.
1) The matter about the Southampton waits being known after a while as
"Richard Wayte", "John Wayte" and "William Wayte" is not unusual. Why
should a So'ton accounting clerk bother with their surnames?--there's no
need! Thus in a civic context I think that the "surname" Wayte/Wait
often did refer to a town wait. But it depends on the context: you have
to know that the Christian name is right and that the reference really
is to someone close to the civic administration -- an employee. In only
a slightly different context, a household wait of the King's household
might be referred to as "XXX Wayte" if the King was staying in the town,
say. We can't be _too_ confident!
2) The more general case depends very much on _date_. I must stress
here (as with John McGavin's comment about Patrick Skowgall) that
precise information is vital. Does anyone on the list know about
surnames in the late Middle Ages? I have always had fairly strong
feelings about whether a man call "le Harpour" was a harper or not, but
the results are unprovable. Roughly speaking, I reckon that in the 14th
and earlier centuries a man called "le Harpour" in any context is likely
to be a harper; that in the 16th century a man called Harper is unlikely
to be a harper unless there's a specific identifiable context that makes
it likely/possible; and that in the 15th century the question is
entirely open and has to be decided (provisionally) according to the
context.
I think that the answers to Peter's questionsare as follows, therefore:
No, we can't be confident, though if enough is known about date and
context we might get a pretty good idea;
Yes, "le Wayte" is a more trustworthy indication of a minstrel, but only
in the sense that it is generally an earlier name, whereas "Wayte" tends
to be 14th/15th-century or later;
Yes, "le Harpour", "le Trumpour", etc., has to be dealt with in the same
way as "le Wayte", and the answer _may_ be the same if the context is.
One corollary to all this relates to Peter's comments about what
does and doesn't go into REED. As he notes, many non-performance
references to Music-named people don't go in REED volumes because the
people aren't obviously musicians: but I hope that REED editors are
keeping a note of them all the same, just in case biographical details
elsewhere show that they really were musicians.
Richard
Richard Rastall
Department of Music,
University of Leeds,
Leeds LS6 9JT
UK
Tel: 0532 332581
Fax: 0532 332586
