fool n Prob a loan-translation of OWNSHOOK, 'foolish woman, female fool' in Irish, recorded in Nfld after 1885 with the sense of a mummer, esp one dressed as a woman.
   1 One of the men, usu elaborately dressed, who participated in a mummers' parade; a Christmas 'mummer' or 'janny.'
   1842 BONNYCASTLE ii, 139-40 Some of the masks are very grotesque, and the fools or clowns are furnished with thongs and bladders, with which they belabour the exterior mob. 1842 JUKES i, 221 Men, dressed in all kinds of fantastic disguises ... called themselves Fools and Mummers. [1886] 1893 J A Folklore vi, 64 [I remember] one of my brothers, who was quite a genius in that line, making a full-rigged brig, and giving it to a person who was to be a 'fool' on New Year's Day, to be used in the decoration of his cap. [1900 OLIVER & BURKE] 47 The mummers ceased to appear in the latter part of the [eighteen] fifties, and a new party known as the Fools came in their place—the juniors from Xmas day to New Year, and the seniors from New Year to Old Xmas. All kinds of fancy costumes were worn by the Fools, and great amusement was afforded to the people. 1937 Bk of Nfld ii, 259 The Fools were one of the great Christmas institutions in the city, as persistently perennial as the season itself. For the time being they held right of way on Water Street, Middle Street, and the streets uniting them. In processions and in detachments they made things lively for other pedestrians, whom they banged over the head and shoulders with inflated bladders. The fools wore masks or thick veils. Their heads were crowned with triangular hats made of cardboard and covered with wallpaper, or gigantic cocked hats adorned with a profusion of glittering metallic spangles and gaily coloured ribbons, and terminated at the top in two or three points from which issued plumes. T 74-64 But then they used to have a bunch of what they call fools, dressed out an' mat rags an' everything sewed onto their clothes. They were a rough bunch. Everyone used to be afraid o' them. T 75-64 An' there were so many masked men then, you know, they were called fools. An' they were to protect the flag while the mummers were in reciting in the dwelling houses. C 71-124 [The women] spent weeks sewing ribbons all over the shirts. They had their own music and used to dance on the snow until they were invited in for a dance in the kitchen. Where the fools went everyone went. They would ask 'Where are the fools tonight?' They would be served cake and ginger wine.
   2 Phr dress in the fools; go out in the fools: to dress in the disguise and costume of a Christmas mummer or janny.
   1893 Christmas Greeting 18 I think it was on St Stephen's Day, that my friend ... first showed me his 'rig,' and told me that I should get one too as they were all 'going out in the fools' that night. C 67-39 As a child he and his friends used [the] greyish-green hair-like substance which grows on dead branches of trees to make whiskers and eyebrows, very often for cloth or brown paper masks, when they 'dressed up in the fools' at Christmas and went from house to house much as children do now at Halloween.

Go Back