The tradition of playing pranks on people or hatching hoaxes on the morning of 1 April is very popular in Britain, but surprisingly little is known about the true origins of this custom.
April Fools’ Day certainly dates back hundreds of years, and versions of it are celebrated across Europe and further afield, but some of the supposedly historical stories connected to it are about as trustworthy as you might expect from a tradition steeped deep in the jocular juices of deliberate deception.
Origins of April Fools’ Day
One possible predecessor to April Fools’ Day is the Roman renewal festival of Hilaria, held in spring, around the vernal equinox in late March, which was the beginning of the new year when Western calendar-keeping started.
During these festivities – which lasted several days, potentially culminating on 1 April – japery included the reversal of traditional roles, so servants (even slaves) became masters, and children could boss their parents around.
If April Fools’ has its roots in the Roman era, it would help explain why forms of it are found across Europe and the Middle East.
Another theory is that it dates to 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII firmly fixed the start of the year to 1 January, after which people still celebrating New Year around the vernal equinox were mocked as fools – although there’s little real evidence for this, and April Fools’ Day probably predate the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.
The tradition is especially strong in Northern Europe, however, where the practice of playing jokes on friends and family on 1 April has been recorded since at least the 16th century.
In France the date is known as Poisson d'avril (April Fish Day) because, apparently, fish are plentiful and stupidly easy to catch around this time of the year. A popular prank is attaching a paper fish to someone’s back without them noticing, and it’s customary to gift chocolate fish.
April Fools’ Day in Britain
According to a story that has become folklore legend, the tradition began in the Nottinghamshire town of Gotham around 1200, when – to avoid punishment after obstructing King John from taking public land – locals pretended to be crazy; when the king’s soldiers arrived they found townsfolk apparently attempting to drown fish and trap birds in roofless fences. Convinced they were lunatics, the monarch left the Gotham people alone and their antics have been celebrated since.
Another yarn claims King Henry VIII invited courtiers to Greenwich Palace to watch mermaids swimming in the Thames, for which there is no supporting evidence whatsoever.
With so many apocryphal stories floating around, and new tall tales added every year, serious historians have to look hard at primary sources, but even these are tricky. Some detect early references to April Fools’ in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, written in the late 14th century, with a fox playing a trick on a rooster in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale ‘32 days since March began’, although this is oblique at best.
Writing in 1686, English antiquary John Aubrey mentions ‘Fooles holy day’ in Remains of Gentilism and Judaism (a collection of observations about folk customs), although he is talking about a German tradition.
According to the Museum of Hoaxes, the earliest recorded example of a British April Fool's Day prank was in 1698, when people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to see lions being washed in the moat. Although lions truly were kept in the Tower’s Royal Menagerie (along with, at various times, tigers, monkeys, elephants, zebras, alligators, bears and kangaroos) they were not washed in the moat (obviously), but sending people on a wild goose chase to see such a sight was a favourite April Fools’ Day theme for centuries, with a post advertising the fictitious event appearing in an 1861 edition of Notes and Queries.
Hunting the Gowk
However it started, April Fools’ became very popular in Scotland in the 18th century, and evolved into a trick-filled two-day tradition, which kicked off on 1 April with an event known as ‘Hunt the Gowk’ (a gowk being a cuckoo, an animal symbolic of the fool and the cuckold), often shortened to Huntegowk or Gowkie Day.
This involved people (usually apprentices or minions) being sent on a senseless errand. Often they were entrusted with delivering an ‘important letter’, which, when opened by the recipient, would read: ‘Dinna laugh, an’ dinna smile. But hunt the gowk another mile’.
Now involved in the prank, they would send the victim to another address, where the same thing would happen until someone took pity or gave the game away, or until the clock reached noon, when tricks traditionally ended.
The respite was temporary, however, because on 2 April – Tailie Day – practical jokes continued apace.
Main image: History of April Fools' Day. Getty
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