Trick or treat

Why do the French call an April Fool a poisson d’avril and a 1 April dupe a victime d’un poisson d’avril? I have always assumed it is because the victimes take the bait and swallow the hook; but Martin Wainwright tells us that the April Fish derives its name from ‘the dim-witted, bulging look of carp’ — ‘the notion suits the bewildered look of a baffled hoax victim’. This side of the Channel we do refer to a ‘cod letter’, a genre in which I can claim a modest track record. Apparently on 1 April Frogs go round sticking paper fish on each others’ backs. How droll: if they had tried that on Quasimodo, he’d have been the Fishback of Nôtre Dame — high gudgeon amid the bells and corbels. And if you stuck 20 franc notes on someone instead of fish, I suppose he’d be a Cashback.

Wainwright’s is a merry little book: you’d need to be very po-faced not to enjoy it. The desire to tease is as much a part of the British character as our love of privacy, our pluck, our phlegm and our alleged indifference to sex. The tease is a minor trial by ordeal: it is essential not to be riled by it. Nancy Mitford — not as a 1 April joke — put her sisters Deborah, Jessica and Unity severely to the test when she pointed out that the middle syllables of their names were bore, sick and nit. If you’re British you have to be a sport, able to take a joke against yourself.

Wainwright’s book is mainly about English and American japes, but he goes into the international history of April Fool’s Day. He thinks it has to do with ‘going mad at the spring equinox’. In 1766 Dr Samuel Pegge, the rector of Whittington in Derbyshire, explored the subject in the Gentleman’s Magazine and found many pre-Roman examples of what he called ‘a day of extraordinary mirth and festivity especially among the lower sorts’.