The authors of The Book of Days could not find the origins of April Fool’s Day, but one of the earliest references they found was from 1713, where Swift entered in his “Journal to Stella” a plotted April Fool’s joke with two friends.  Unfortunately, his friends did not do their part, and the joke flopped.  The authors believe the holiday to have an earlier origin, since they make reference to a Hindu festival ending March 31 that is celebrated in similar fashion, thus showing the widespread nature of the holiday.

     They describe a typical joke in Scotland of their time, in which someone is sent with a letter to a friend’s house two miles away, claiming the letter asks to borrow something.  The letter actually says “This is the first day of April, Hunt the gowk another mile.”  Reading the message, the friend sadly explains that he cannot provide what is requested, but if the messenger goes to so-and-so’s house, it can be obtained.  So this friend sends the messenger another mile to another house with the same message.  This continues on down the line until someone takes pity on the messenger and lets on about the prank.  “A successful affair of this kind will keep rustic society in merriment for a week . . . The Scotch employ the term gowk (which is properly a cuckoo) to express a fool in general, but more especially an April fool, and among them the practice above described is called hunting the gowk.”

     They describe an April Fool’s prank that was played on a large scale in 1860.  It seems that “a vast multitude of people” received an official-looking invitation in the mail to view the “Annual Ceremony of Washing the White Lions (at the Tower of London), on Sunday, April 1st, 1860.  Admitted only at the White Gate.”  Cabs rode all over Tower Hill that Sunday morning looking for the non-existent White Gate.

     So, whatever its origins, it appears that April Fool’s Day has been with us for a good 300 years, probably more.  And if someone played a prank on you this year, at least it didn’t involve walking or running miles and miles through the Highlands.  Small consolation when you’re made to look like a fool, right?

From The Book of Days, A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar Including Anecdote, Biography, & History, Curiosities of Literature and Oddities of Human Life and Character.  (Edited by Robert Chambers, published in 1878 by W & R Chambers, Ltd., London &

Edinburgh.)