English custom; but it is unquestionably very ancient, and is still kept up even in great towns, though less in them than in the country. With us it is chiefly confined to the lower class of people, but in India high and low join in it; and the late Sourajah Doulah, I am told, was very fond of making Huli fools, though he was a Mussulman of the highest rank. They carry the joke here so far as to send letters making appointments in the names of persons, who it is known must be absent from their houses at the time fixed upon; and the laugh is always in proportion to the trouble given."*

Upon this Maurice † has well observed, that the origin of the custom is to be sought in the ancient practices amongst the Eastern people of "celebrating with festival rites the period of the Vernal Equinox, or the day. when the new year of Persia anciently began." But, however derived, the name at least existed among the Romans, for we find the following pertinent passage in Plutarch,—" Why do they call the Quirinalia the Feast of Fools? was it because this day was given, as Juba writes, to those who were ignorant of their tribe? or was it because it was permitted to those, who had not sacrificed, like the rest, at the Fornacalia in their tribe, on account of business, travelling, or ignorance, to recover their festival on this occasion,"‡

Brand is inclined to believe that All Fools' Day is only

* Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 334.

+ Indian Antiquities, vol. vi. p. 71.

* Κεφαλαίων Καταγραφη Ρωμαικα, 89—Plut. Op. Tomus ii. p. 115. Qrto. Oxon: 1726. Sir Henry Ellis, who was directed to this passage by the Rev. W. Walter, Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, calls it "a singular passage." In what its singularity consists I am at a loss to conceive. If there be anything at all out of the way in the business, it is that a writer of so much pretension as Sir Henry should need a finger-post to direct him on the road to Plu

a corruption of Old Fools' Day,* and that it was meant originally in ridicule of the Druids. He says, "Our epithet of Old Fools'-in the Northern and Old English, auld, -does not ill accord with the pictures of Druids transmitted to us. The united appearance of age, sanctity, and wisdom, which these ancient priests assumed, doubtless contributed in no small degree to the deception of the people. The Christian preachers in their labours to undeceive the fettered multitudes would probably spare no pains to pull off the masks from these venerable hypocrites, and point out to their converts that age was not always synonymous with wisdom, that youth was not the peculiar period of folly, but that together with young ones there were also old (auld) fools."

It would be useless to waste any arguments in refutation of such solemn trifling, for which Brand does not offer even the shadow of a reason. The notion, such as it is, was borrowed by him from the "Essay to retrieve the ancient Celtic," as appears by his own previous quotation from that author.

This custom was not confined to our island. It seems to have prevailed also in Sweden, for we find that Toreen in his Voyage to Suratte, says, "The 1st of April we set sail on board the ship called the Gothic Lion, after the west wind had continued to blow for five months together at Gothenburgh, and had almost induced us to believe that there is a trade-wind in the Skaggerac Sea.

tarch, whom he quotes with as much pomp and circumstance as if he had brought to light some rare manuscript. Still stranger is it that being so directed by his Cambridge friend, he could not manage to give a correct version of his author. Aloxaλiav, he renders by negligence, instead of business or occupation, to say nothing of the general looseness of his translation which, if words mean any thing, should be rather called an imitation.

The wind made April fools of us, for we were forced to return before Skagen, and to anchor at Rifwefiol."*

Amongst the French the custom itself exists, though the name attached to it is changed. With them the person imposed upon is called a poisson d'Avril,” which Bellingen explains to be a corruption of Passion, and contends that it is a memorial of the Jews' mockery of our Saviour in taking him backwards and forwards from Annas to Caiphas, from Caiphas to Pilate, from Pilate to Herod, and from Herod back again to Pilate. His words are, "Quant au mot de poisson, il a esté corrompu, comme une infinité d'autres, par l'ignorance du vulgaire, et la longeur du temps a presque effacè la memoire du terme

* A voyage to Suratte, China, &c., from the 1st of April 1750 to 26th of June 1752. By Olof Toreen. This voyage, which is detailed in a series of letters, addressed to the celebrated Linnæus, is not published separately, but is to be found at the end of Peter Osbeck's "Voyage to China and the East Indies, translated from the German by J. R. Forster, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1771." I am not however without my suspicions that Forster's translation is from Dominique Blackford's French version, published at Milan in the same year, though I have never seen the original, which is much more likely to be in Swedish than in German, considering that Toreen was a Swede writing to a Swede and for the Swedish public.

This quotation is also given in Ellis's edition of Brand, though there is some reason to doubt whether he ever saw the book he pretends to cite. His only giving the name of Toreen, without any mention of the work itself would not indeed be conclusive as to this point, but the suspicion almost becomes certainty when we find the extract shamefully garbled, and the only two names of places, that occur, so deformed by misspelling as scarcely to be recognizable, while the voyage is, as I have just mentioned, not published by itself, but as a sort of supplement to Osbeck. The places, I allude to, are Skagen, printed by Sir H. Ellis, Shagen, and Rifwefiol transformed by him into Riswopol, and that not only in the old quarto but in the recent 12mo edition, published by Knight; but indeed the last is the worst of the two; every page is full of blunders, both typographical and literary.

original; car au lieu qu'on dit presentment Poisson on a dit Passion de le commencement; parceque la passion du Sauveur du Monde est arrivée environ ce temps la, et d'autantque que les Juifs firent faire diverses courses à Jesus Christ, pour se moquer de luy et pour luy faire de la peine, le renvoyant d'Annè a Caïphe, de Caïphe a Pilate, de Pilate à Herode, et d'Herode a Pilate, on a pris cette ridicule ou plutot impie contume de faire courir et de renvoyer d'un droit a l'autre ceux desquels on se veut moquer environ ces jours la."* The absurdity of such an explanation will need no comment to those, who recollect what has been already mentioned of the same custom having existed in India and Rome, ages before the Jews had an opportunity of mocking Christ. But at the same time there seems to be just as little reason for agreeing with Mr. Donce, when he tells us, "I am convinced that the ancient ceremony of the Feast of Fools has no connection whatever with the custom of making fools on the first of April. The making of April fools, after all the conjectures which have been formed touching its origin, is certainly borrowed by us from the French, and may I think be deduced from this simple analogy. The French call them poissons d'Avril, i. e. simpletons, or, in other words, silly mackarel, which suffer themselves to be caught in this month. But as with us April is not the season of that fish, we have very properly substituted the word fools."+

How mackerel should be in season with the French, and not with us, Mr. Donce has not thought proper to explain, and we may safely reject this absurdity without

* L'Etymologie, ou Explication des Proverbes Français, par Fleury de Bellingen, p. 34. 8vo. à la Haye, 1656. See also, Leroux, Dictionnaire Comique, Tome i. p. 70. Minshew's Ductor in Linguas; and Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Anecdotes. Tom. ii. p. 97.

+ Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i. p. 82.

any farther argument. It is possible that he may be right in denying the identity of All Fools' Day with the Feast of Fools; but it certainly admits of question; for although the latter was held on the first of November, yet it stands marked in the ancient Romish Calendar as having been removed thither from some other day-" Festum Stulto> rum hunc translatum est,"- "the Feast of Fools was removed hither." Removals of this kind were far from being uncommon in the Roman Calendar, when, as often happened, any particular day became laden with more Saints than it could conveniently carry.

Upon this subject it only remains to notice that in the North, April fools were called April Gouks, gouk, or gowk, which literally means a cuckoo, being commonly used for a term of contempt.

Palm Sunday, Dominica Palmarum, Dominica in Ramis Palmarum, Parasceue* or Pascha Floridum, is the sixth and last Sunday in Lent, and the one immediately preceding Easter. It was thus called from the old Roman Catholic custom of carrying palm branches in procession on that day in comemoration of the palms or olives, that the Jews strewed in the way of Christ when he went up to Jerusalem. Strutt, in the third volume of Horda Angel-Cynnan, p. 174, quotes from an old manuscript, "wherefor holi

* Parasceue, though sometimes peculiarly applied to this day, is also a general term, for it often signifies the eve or vigil of any other solemn feast, in which there is a rest from labour:-" interdum etiam," says Hospinian (p. 59—de Fest. Christ.)" significat vigiliam sive profestum cujuscunque alterius festi solennis, in quo ab omni opere servili quiescendum est."-According to etymology it signifies nothing more than the day of preparation, from the Greek πаρаσкεvỲ, a preparation.

† See Festa Anglo-Romana, p. 39, 12mo. London, 1678; Historia Sacra, p. 151, 8vo. London, 1720; Wheatley's Illustration, &c. p. 225, fol. London, 1720; Durandi Rationale Divin. Offic. lib. vi. De Domin. in Ramis Palmarum, p. 215, Qto. Venetiis, 1609.