Culture

April's Fools

April 01, 2008
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The custom of fooling people on the 1st of April has distinctly misty origins—although we know it relates to the timing of the Vernal equinox (the dates in Spring on which day and night are equal in length) at around this time of year, and to the ancient significance of this equinox as the beginning of the northern hemisphere's annual cycle of growth.

Misrule, carnival and temporary absurdity have certainly proved among the most enduring of pre-Christian traditions. As far back as the 16th century, Edmund Spenser was to be found complaining in private correspondence that "the queene doth make much merrie with bladders" at the expense of her less distinguished courtiers in April, while Sir Walter Raleigh was known to stage mock-tournaments with codpieces in honour of "lent's endyng"—a suggestion of sublimated fertility rituals, perhaps; or simply the Elizabethan obsession with genitals.

As early as the 14th century, Chaucer's Nun's Priests Tale, contains two fools duelling with giant phalluses and takes place on exactly 1st April ("thritty dayes and two" after the beginning of March). Chaucer, in turn, had in mind the earlier French tradition of fabliau—obscene, joking narratives that, more often than not, saw genitals and bladders deployed in biologically improbable locations during the "spring-time," usually thanks to the interventions of mischievous sprites and spirits.

It is, however, none other than Julius Caesar who provides us with what is surely the earliest known example of an April fool. One passage in his De Bello Gallico ("On the Gallic Wars") records the Romans facing a horde at the time of the equinox. The battle lines were arrayed and weapons drawn when, suddenly, the Romans' foes started making noises like cats, bared their backsides at the enemy, then ran away, led by none other than the great Gallic chieftan Vercingetorix in a cat-skin cloak. So amused was Caesar by this jape that, when Vercingetorix was finally defeated, he decided to pardon him.