Eulenspiegelei

In 'The Magic Mountain', Hans Castorp comments on the unfairness of the cycle of the seasons:
"Nein, das ist eine Eulenspiegelei! Im Winter wachsen die Tage, und wenn der längste kommt, 21. Juni, Sommersanfang, dann geht es schon wieder bergab, sie werden schon wieder kürzer, und es geht gegen den Winter … Es ist, als ob Eulenspiegel es so eingerichtet hätte, dass zu Wintersanfang eigentlich der Frühling beginnt."

Till Eulenspiegel (his surname translates as ‘owl-mirror’) is a 14th-century German folklore character, a practical joker who performs often scatalogical pranks to expose the wrongdoings of the clergy and of the rich and powerful. The problem is: he isn‘t well known in English, so I need to find an equivalent.

Added problem: in the quoted passage, his name is turned into a noun meaning ‘trickery’, a ‘mess-up’. (It also reads like the German for ‘fried egg’ - ‘Spiegelei’ – although that's not a factor here.)

Anyway, my solution is ‘tomfoolery’ and ‘Tom Fool’ as follows:
‘No, it’s tomfoolery! In winter the days wax, and as soon as the longest one comes around, the twenty-first of June, the start of summer, then it’s all downhill again, and they shorten towards winter … It’s as if Tom Fool had arranged for spring to begin at the start of winter and autumn at the start of summer.’

Tom Fool: a court jester, an upsetter of the established order. And also a famous Kentucky racehorse in the 1950s…

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