Dictionaries of all sorts were compiled before the old phrases and words were completely lost:

1854

"WAITS. The Corporation of Northampton, within the remembrance of my informant, had a band of musicians called the corporation
waits, who used to meet the judges at the entrance into the town at the time of the assizes. They were four in number, attired in long
black gowns, two playing on violins, one on the hautboy, and the other on a whip and dub, or tabor and pipe."

"Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases" by Anne Elizabeth Baker (1854), vol II page 388

Also see 'terminology' for other dictionaries.

The pipe and tabor accompanied many leisure-time activities including elections:

processions 1826 Newspaper report of local election: The Gentlemen with music must have been accompanied by the pipe and tabor as the later paragraph in the newspaper report says 'without tabor, pipe'.	1826 Election song for Liddell in Northumberland: “Liddell for ever Strike up in full concert pipe, tabor and fiddle; Northumbrian freeholders rejoice one and all...” Newcastle Courant - Friday 20 May 1887
1832 ‘Closing of the Registration of Votes for Southern Northumberland’Newcastle Journal - Sunday 02 December 1832
1835 Election address:Dorset County Chronicle - Thursday 21 May 1835
1843 Election procession: Bell's Weekly Messenger - Monday 01 May 1843
1869 Election band: Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Thursday 16 September 1869
1877 A political satire upon William Gladstone: Various people from all walks of lifeTruth - Thursday 06 September 1877
1879 Political Rhyme - ‘To the Liberal electors of North Norfolk'Durham County Advertiser - Friday 07 February 1879
1879 in 'Forfar Notes' Dundee Evening Telegraph - Thursday 13 February 1879
1883 The Referee - Sunday 16 December 1883
1891 in ‘Comic and Gossip Papers’Bucks Herald - Saturday 07 March 1891
1895 processing ‘With the Volunteers at Cardynham’Cornishman - Thursday 22 August 1895
Wedding procession 1840:Works, by Edward Howard, Volume 1  ‘Jack Ashore’, p143
1843 wedding procession observed in 'Great Cities': Kentish Mercury - Saturday 04 March 1843
1841 Great Dunmow procession Leeds Intelligencer - Saturday 10 April 1841	Great Dunmow procession
In 1855 the pipe and tabor were placed near the back of the procession for the ‘The Flitch of Bacon Pageant’: Essex Standard - Friday 20 July 1855
1842 It appears to be the custom to greet respectable visitors with a procession that includes the pipe and tabor.
1848 newspaper ploitcal comment: Reading Mercury - Saturday 05 February 1848
1850 Greenhill Bower in Lichfield, Staffordshire, on Whit Monday, consisted of a Court Leet followed by a procession that included a pipe and tabor and morris dancers. Wolverhampton Chronicle and Staffordshire Advertiser - Wednesday 29 May 1850 1850 Lichfield procession
1892 In an essay entitled ‘So Respectable’ the pipe and tabor are still remembered as being used to greet honoured folk: Bridge of Allan Reporter - Saturday 06 February 1892

1835 'Grand Excursion of the City Committee for General Purposes'
'The boat travelled down the River Thames, London, to the sound of the pipe and tabor.'

Morning Advertiser - Monday 03 August 1835

1869 celebration: ‘Pipes and tabors sound your best’ Essex Times - Wednesday 11 August 1869

1840 Fete champetre at Percy Cross given by Lady Ravensworth:
‘at the latter place there was erected a triumphal arch, towering to the height of two hundred feet, composed of rare exotics
and native plants, with a prominent scroll with " Victoria and Albert.  A rude band — the village pipe and tabor — gave
additional hilarity to the festival.’
Morning Post - Saturday 27 June 1840

Worcester Herald - Saturday 29 August 1857 reveiwed a concert in which:
...”tabor pipe, bagpipes and such-like instruments all in their turn being called into requisition:...”

Concert in Worcester College hall reviewed in 1860: Worcester Herald - Saturday 15 September 1860

1866 Aa concert given in aid of the University College Hospital,
Gower Street, London. ‘The programme was remarkable for its novelty...Morning Advertiser - Wednesday 14 February 1866

1886 concert in London Sporting Life - Saturday 13 March 1886

It was thought that the pipe and tabor were instruments of the lower classes:

1829, July 4th (letter addressed To the Editor of the Mirror.)

"Three years ago you .... lamented the decrease of village
festivity and rural merriment, which in days langsyne cheered the honest
hearts and lightened the daily toil of our rustic ancestors. ... the song, the dance, and innocent
revelry are not quite forgotten in some part of our land, .....a village fete which I lately witnessed
and enjoyed....the company were just arriving in procession, preceded by a pink and white silken banner,
while a pipe and tabor regulated their march. ... led the party off in
the order they came to witness the ceremony of "dressing" the May-Pole...."

In a novel in 1836
"soon after the sound of pipe and tabor came from the servant’s hall"

Waldie's select circulating library, Volume 7

1835

" Music, of all arts, gives the most universal pleasure, and pleases longest and oftenest. 
Infants are charmed with the melody of sounds, and old age is animated by enlivening notes. 
... the English peasant delights in his pipe and tabor;"

THAUMATURGIA,OR ELUCIDATIONS OF THE MARVELLOUS BY AN OXONIAN

1847 ' The Village Merry-Making
A Hundred Years Ago'

“The pipe and tabor is cleverly introduced for the chorus of peasants outside...”

Morning Advertiser - Friday 02 July 1858

Street entertainers in towns were common but they earned very little:

Sunday, November 13, 1831 Bell's Weekly Messenger

"Whole houses are inhabited by these wretched boys, who sleep eight and nine in a bed; ... The following are the charges made
by the proprietors upon the juvenile crew:...For a dog and monkey (the latter may be frequently seen in the street riding on the dog's
back), 3s. per day. For dancing dogs, four in number, including dresses, spinning-wheel, pipe and tabor, &c. 5s. per day...
Some of these boys, by their artlessness of manner and gesticulations, it is said, obtain six or seven schillings a day, and some more."

1868 Race meeting Chester “Fellows were there with monkeys and music; the pipe and tabor and the hurdy gurdy. 
Jugglers and montebanks with apes and bears.”

Liverpool Weekly Courier - Saturday 09 May 1868

1849

“The street dances are always performed on a small piece of board (about three feet long and two feet wide), placed in the middle
of the road... Included in the twelve London street-dancers are six children; these are girls from five to fifteen years of age. The
fathers of these girls play the drum and pipes..."

1849-50 ‘The Morning Chronicle : Labour and Poor’ Henry Mayhew

1867

"At the fair ... and the lads and lasses footing it to the fife and tabor, and the people chattering in groups"

'Griffith Gaunt; or, Jealousy' by Charles Reade

1897 dancing monkey entertained in the street:

..." a jackanapes he had seen once at the Stratford fair, which wore a crimson jerkin and a cap. The man who had the jackanapes
played upon a pipe and a tabor; and when he said, "Dance!" the jackanapes danced, for it was sorely afraid of the man.”

'Master Skylark' a novel by John Bennett

1892

"In summer they have music before they go to bed. We are in a city that has always been fond of music.
The noise of crowd and pipe, tabor and cithern, is now silent in the streets. Rich men kept their own musicians."

1892 London

"In the following chapters it has been my endeavor to present pictures of the City of London..... showing the streets, the buildings,
and the citizens at work and at play....  the cheerful sound of pipe and tabor; the stage with its tumblers and its rope-dancers;.....

It is an evening in May. What means this procession? Here comes a sturdy rogue marching along valiantly, blowing pipe and
beating tabor. After him, a rabble rout of lads and young men, wearing flowers in their caps, and bearing branches and singing lustily
.... Presently the evening falls.  The noise of crowd and pipe, tabor and cithern, is now silent in the streets...

Everywhere singing—everywhere joy and happiness. In the streets the very prentices and their sweethearts danced, to the pipe
and tabor, those figures called the Brawl and the Canary, and better dancing, with greater spirit and more fidelity to the steps,
had I never before seen."

Walter Besant 

1914 GOETHE'S MOTHER

"Where are the echoes that bore the strains
Each to his nearest neighbour;
And all the valleys and all the plains
Where all the nymphs and their love-sick swains
Made merry to pipe and tabor?

Where are they gone? "

The Bed-Book of Happiness by Harold Begbie (1871-1929)

Not everyone appreciated the sound of these instruments:

1830 tabor and pipe are a noisy disturbance

1857 infamy and vice: East London Observer - Saturday 24 October 1857

1883 newspaper article referring to wedding music on bells rather than “indecorous choruses of pipe and tabor of old times”

Eddowes's Journal, and General Advertiser for Shropshire, and the Principality of Wales - Wednesday 23 May 1883
‘Anecdotal History of Bells, part IV Wedding Bells, by William Andrews’

“ Let us not, like the sour preacher, cry out upon a young man because he glorifies his body by fine raiment.
To such a jagg'd and embroidered sleeve is as bad as the sound of pipe and tabor or the sight of a playhouse. ..."

1892 London byWalter Besant

1859

The Atlas - Saturday 21 May

1895 ‘A Christmas Baedeker for London’ - a commentry on shopping Pall Mall Gazette - Monday 25 November 1895

enjoyment:

1843 May ‘when daylight lingers over garden seats and grassy banks, as in reluctance to o'erveil the happy group, and stop
the merry dance unwont to stay the pipe and tabor, bag-up the capering fiddle, or part the sighing swain from doting maiden.
Welcome, welcome, smiling May...’
Illustrated London Life - Sunday 07 May 1843

1861

Sheffield Daily Telegraph - Tuesday 31 December 1861

1899 The Conference of the Incorporated Society of Musicians talk entitled "The Folk Music of the West of England."

“Mr. Baring-Gould related how he had, with the assistance of collaborators, collected the folk airs of Devon and Cornwall—
in cottages and taverns, and among miners, farmers, stone-breakers, hedgers, and others. The words to many of the songs were
such balderdash that they had in some cases to re-write them; but as to the melodies, they took no liberties with them.  
Some of the airs were certainly ancient minstrel melodies that demanded the pipe and tabor as accompaniment.”

London Evening Standard - Friday 06 January 1899

Sporting Life - Friday 14 December 1894
Review: A musical instrument exhibition at the Royal Aquarium included a pipe and tabor.

Oxfordshire Weekly News - Wednesday 14 August 1895
Music and musicians of the 18th century, a lecture by  Mr F Cunningham Woods, showed a pipe and tabor  
otherwise known as ‘ whittle and dub’  formerly belonging to an inhabitant of Hailey.

The pipe and tabor were played in an 1897 production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Musical direction by Arnold Dolmetsch
(The Goldsmith’s Hall, London: 13 November 1897).

The Dodo was Really a Phoenix: The Renaissance and Revival of the Recorder in England 1879-1941 Alexandra Mary Williams

In The Era of Saturday 27 November 1897 the reviewer describes the pipe and tabor as played in The Tempest.