Definitions
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- proper noun in the UK, Canada A particular night during which young people play pranks and do mischief in their neighborhoods.
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Gammerstang commented on the word Mischief Night
The evening before May-day is termed "Mischief Night" by the young people of Burnley and the surrounding district. All kinds of mischief are then perpetrated. Formerly, shopkeepers' sign-boards were exchanged. Young men and women play each other tricks by placing branches of trees, shrubs, or flowers under each other's windows, or before their doors. All these have a symbolic rhyming meaning, significant if not always complimentary; thus a thorn implies scorn, wicken (mountain ash) 'my dear chicken,' a bramble for one who likes to ramble, &c. Much ill-feeling is, at times, engendered by this custom. --John Harland and T.T. Wilkinson's Lancashire Folklore, 1867
January 27, 2018