In Ireland, what phrase was inside traditional April Fools' errand letters?

In Ireland, traditional April Fools’ errand letters contained the phrase “Send the fool further.”

The custom involved giving the intended victim an apparently important letter and asking them to deliver it to a named person. When the recipient opened the letter, its message instructed that person to send the “fool” onward to someone else. The victim could therefore be passed from one messenger to another as part of the joke.

This prank is a classic example of an April Fools’ errand: the task appears urgent or respectable, but its real purpose is to make the target travel pointlessly. Similar customs have existed in other places, including requests to fetch improbable items or deliver meaningless messages.

The wording is memorable because it turns the victim’s role into the punchline. It is also more specific than general reveal phrases such as “April Fools!” The Irish tradition illustrates how April 1 jokes historically relied not only on false news or verbal tricks, but also on social cooperation, staged authority, and a chain of people who understood the joke before the target did.