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hours, until the craft was called from labor to rest and refreshment; and thus a cathedral was uplifted as a monument to the Order, albeit the names of the builders are faded and lost. Employed for years on the same building, and living together in the Lodge, it is not strange that Free-masons came to know and love one another, and to have a feeling of loyalty to their craft, unique, peculiar, and enduring. Traditions of fun and frolic, of song and feast and gala-day, have floated down to us, telling of a comradeship as joyous as it was genuine. If their life had hardship and vicissitude, it had also its grace and charm of friendship, of sympathy, service, and community of interest, and the joy that comes of devotion to a high and noble art. (* Gloves were more widely used in the olden times than now, and the practice of giving them as presents was common in mediaeval times. Often, when the harvest was over, gloves were distributed to the laborers who gathered it (History of Prices in England, Rogers), and richly embroidered gloves formed an offering gladly accepted by princes. Indeed, the bare hand was regarded as a symbol of hostility, and the gloved hand a token of peace and goodwill. For Masons, however, the white gloves and apron had meanings hardly guessed by others, and their symbolism remains to this day with its simple and eloquent appeal. (See chapter on "Masonic Clothing and Regalia," in Things A Freemason Should Know, by J. W. Crowe, an interesting article by Rylands, A. Q. C., vol v, and the delightful essay on "Gloves," by Dr. Mackey, in his Symbolism of Freemasonry.) Not only the tools of the builder, but his clothing, had moral meaning.) (** Tiler like the word cable-tow is a word peculiar to the language of Masonry, and means one who guards the Lodge to see that only Masons are within ear-shot. It probably derives from the Middle Ages when the makers of tiles for roofing were also of migratory habits (History of Prices in England, Rogers), and accompanied the Free- masons to perform their share of the work of covering buildings. Some tiler was appointed to act as sentinel to keep off intruders, and hence, in course of time, the name of Tiler came to be applied to any Mason who guarded hle Lodge.) (*** Much has been written of the derivation and meaning of the word cowan, some finding its origin in a Greek term meaning "dog." (See "An Inquiry Concerning Cowans," by D. Rainsay, Review of Freemasonry, vol. i.) But its origin is still to seek, unless we accept it as an old Scotch word of contempt (Dictionary of Scottish Language, Jamieson). Sir Walter Scott uses it as such in Rob Roy, "she doesna' value a Cawmil mair as a cowan" (chap. xxix). Masons used the word to describe a "dry- diker, one who built without cement," or a Mason without the word. Unfortunately, we still have cowans in this sense men who try to be Masons without using the cement of brotherly love. If only they could be kept out! Blackstone describes an eavesdropper as "a common nuisance punishable by fine." "Legend says that the old- time Masons punished such prying persons, who sought to learn their signs and secrets, by holding them under the eaves until the water ran in at the neck and out at the heels. What penalty was inflicted in dry weather, we are not informed. At any rate, they had contempt for a man who tried to make use of the signs of the craft without knowing its art and ethics.) When a Mason wished to leave one Lodge and go elsewhere to work, as he was free to do when he desired, he had no difficulty in making himself known to the men of his craft by certain signs, grips, and words.* Such tokens of recognition were necessary to men who traveled afar in those uncertain days, especially when references or other means of identification were ofttimes impossible. All that many people knew about the order was that its members had a code of secret signs, and that no Mason need be friendless or alone when other Masons were within sight or hearing; so that the very name of the craft came to stand for any mode of hidden recognition. Steele, in the Tatler, speaks of a class of people who have "their signs and tokens like Free- masons." There were more than one of these signs and tokens, as we are more than once told in the "Harleian MS," for example, which speaks of "words and signs." What they were may not be here discussed, but it is safe to say that a Master Mason of the Middle Ages, were he to return from the land of shadows, could perhaps make himself known as such in a Fellowcraft Lodge of today. No doubt some things would puzzle him at first, but he would recognize the officers of the Lodge, its form, its emblems, its great altar Light, and its moral truth taught in symbols. Besides, he could tell us, if so minded, much that we should like to learn about the craft in the olden times, its hidden mysteries, the details of its rites, and the meaning of its symbols when the poetry of building was yet alive. (* This subject is most fascinating. Even in primitive ages there seems to have been a kind of universal sign-language employed, at times, by all people. Among widely separated tribes the signs were very similar, owing, perhaps, to the fact that they were natural gestures of greeting, of warning, or of distress. There is intimation of this in the Bible, when the life of Ben-Hadad was saved by a sign given (I Kings, 20 :30 35). Even among the North American Indians a sign-code of like sort was known (Indian Masonry, R. C. Wright, chap iii). "Mr. Ellis, by means of his knowledge as a Master Mason, actually passed himself into the sacred part or adytum of one of the temples of India" (Ananalslypsis, G. Higgins, vol. 1, 767). See also the experience of Haskett Smith among the Druses, already referred to (A. Q. C., iv, 11). Kipling has a rollicking story with the Masonic sign-code for a theme, entitled "The Man Who Would be King," and his imagination is positively uncanny. If not a little of the old sign-language of the race lives to this day in Masonic Lodges, it is due not only to the exigencies of the craft, but also to the instinct of the order for the old, the universal, the human; its genius for making use of all the ways and means whereby men may be brought to know and love and help one another.) III This brings us to one of the most hotly debated questions in Masonic history the question as to the number and nature of the degrees made use of in the old craft lodges. Hardly any other subject has so deeply engaged the veteran archaeologists of the order, and while it ill becomes any one glibly to decide such an issue, it is at least permitted us, after studying all of value that has been written on both sides, to sum up what seems to be the truth arrived at.* While such a thing as a written record of an ancient degree aside from the Old Charges, which formed a part of the earliest rituals is unthinkable, we are not left altogether to the mercy of conjecture in a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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