APRIL FOOL’S DAY A DYING CUSTOM?

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30405, 2 April 1964, Page 1

APRIL FOOL’S DAY A DYING CUSTOM?

Yesterday was a disappointing day. There was so little evidence of even the mildest jokes, japes or pranks as to suggest that April Fool’s Day might be dying out. Or perhaps practical jokers are a dying race. Yesterday was the day of the year, says Chambers’s “Book of Days,” when the great object was “to catch some person off his guard, to pass off upon him as a simple fact something barely possible, and which has no truth in it; to impose upon him so as to induce him to go into positions of absurdity in the eye of a laughing circle of bystanders.” Coolness, tact and the element of surprise were essential to a good April Fool’s Day joke. Chambers suggests a suitable joke would be for a crew of giggling servant maids to get hold of some simple swain and send him to a bookseller’s shop for “The History of Eve's Grandmother,” or to a chemist’s for a pennyworth of pigeon’s milk. The Book of Days approvingly records the Scottish

April Fool’s Day practice called “hunting the gowk.’’ The “gowk” is some simple soul who is sent with a note to someone two miles off, thinking he is being sent on some important errand. But all the note says is “This is the first day of April. Hunt the gowk another mile.” Accordingly he is sent on from place to place until he tumbles to the trick. Derived from France April Fool’s Day—or All Fool’s Day—is thought to be of very ancient origin, and various theories have been put forward. It seems that both England and Germany derived the fashion from France, where the dupe is still called an “April-fish.” In spite of such a respectable pedigree April Fool’s Day seems to have been ignored in Christchurch this year. Some school headmasters and headmistresses sternly warned pupils at assembly not to try anything. Apart from some mild telephone jokes, most others have refrained from the elaborate tricks which onee “kept rustic society in merriment for a week.”