THE BUILDER March, 1927

The Precious Jewels

By BROS. A. L. KRESS AND R. J. MEEKREN

(Continued. All rights reserved)

In the Study Club for last month we discussed the working tools of
the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages and in especial the
probable, or at least possible methods employed in making and
testing them, with a view to obtaining a clearer understanding of
the use of some kind of standard or test block in the working
lodges, and to explain how their nonoperative successors
misunderstood and misapplied statements that to a working Mason
would be perfectly clear.

Thus we have seen that in the version of the Old Catechisms that
Prichard has preserved for us it is said that the "rough" ashlar
was "for the Fellow Crafts to try their Jewels upon" and that the
Confession said that the "Dinted" ashlar was "to adjust the square
and make the gages by." Now from France we get another version, (1)
published in 1744, which also connects a special stone with the
working tools the Craft, though in exceedingly absurd fashion. The
passage runs:

D. Quels sont les trois immobiles [bijoux] ?
R. La Pierre brute pour les Apprentifs; la Pierre cubique a point
pour aiguiser les outils des Compagnons; et la Planche a tracer sur
laquelle les Maitres font leurs Desseins.

which may be rendered:

Q. What are the three immoveable [jewels] ?

A. The rough stone for the Apprentices; the pointed cubical stones
for the Companions [Fellows] to sharpen their tools; and the
tracing [or drawing] board on which the Masters make their
designs.

The accompanying illustration (2) is taken from a design that was
reproduced in all the various reprints and editions of this work
that we have examined. There were a great many, and they appeared
under many different titles, though the substance remained very
much the same. It is said to be a "Plan of the Lodge."

At the top, on the left, is la pierre brute, on the right the
pointed cubic stone. The axe resting on it is presumably one of the
tools to be sharpened ! This bright idea, however, was evolved by
somebody absolutely ignorant of the craft of the stone shed.
Masons' tools of course are not sharpened like those of wood
workers. They are tempered much harder, and the angles of the
cutting edges are so obtuse that grinding would be an exceedingly
slow and tedious process. The method is to heat them in a forge and
draw them out on the anvil. The edge may be filed while still hot,
after which the tool is heated again, hardened and retempered. It
sounds somewhat complicated, but a blacksmith does it very quickly-
-a forge is a necessary adjunct to every stone-yard or quarry.

In this French version several changes will be noticed, which will
be discussed later, at present it is to be noted that the account
in this work, the origin of which is really as uncertain as that of
Prichard or of the Confession, is not a translation of either, nor
of any of the other known documents; yet it in many respects
parallels them. We may assume that it is derived from an otherwise
unknown variant tradition--much sophisticated and edited in the
process. It bears manifest traces of being a very literal
translation into French from an English original, and the
translator seems to have been hard put to it to give any
intelligible rendering of the obscure passages.

At first sight it would seem that this explanation of the use of
the wrought stone as intended to sharpen tools on was merely a wild
guess thrown in for the purpose of explanation, but against such a
supposition is the fact that there is no

attempt to explain the "brute" stone. A somewhat later version of
the catechisms in much better French, it appeared in 1745, omits
the clause altogether and merely says that it is assigned to the
Fellowcrafts; and one may guess that perhaps the omission was due
to a realization of the absurdity of the statement as it stood.
This fact also tends to confirm a suspicion that it may have been
a last, faint, entirely misunderstood echo of a real Operative
tradition. The closer these old documents are examined the more the
student comes to realize the astonishing vitality that phrases and
odds and ends of tradition seem to have. They are displaced,
modified, reinterpreted and misapplied, and yet in spite of all
recognizably retain their identity. In any case this 1745 French
account confirms the others in connecting a specially worked stone
with the tools of the Craft. It is doubtless altogether too
hazardous to suppose that in this idea of its being a glorified
whetstone on which edge tools were rubbed to sharpen them we may
have a very faint reflection of the method spoken of earlier of
truing a wooden rule or straight edge by rubbing it on the surface
of a squared stone. However, seeing that we are trying to explore
every possibility the suggestion is thrown out for whatever it may
be worth.

We have said that this account is an independent version; it agrees
nevertheless with Prichard in dividing the jewels into two sets of
three, and in regard to those designated "moveable" there is
complete agreement as to what they are, and their order; although
instead of their uses being explained we are merely told that they
are carried respectively by the Master and the "First" and "Second"
Wardens.

REASON FOR THE TERMS MOVEABLE AND IMMOVEABLE

Before going further it may be as well to discuss this division and
the descriptions of the two classes. Mention was made of the fact
that these designations were reversed for some reason, not very
apparent, by the Baltimore Convention in 1843, (3) so that the
moveable became the immoveable and vice versa. The best account
that we have so far been able to discover of what was done is that
of Chas. W. Moore, which was reproduced in THE BUILDER for
September, on page 283. One gathers from this statement that there
were differences existing, and the best way to account for the
decision reached is to suppose that the members of the Convention
had no other light on the subject than that of unaided reason or
imagination--both, in such matters, very fallacious guides. In all
probability the original division of the two groups, and the names
applied to them, were due to very simple and matter of fact
reasons. The square, level and plumb, as "collar" jewels of the
three officers of the lodge, were concere objects and obviously and
literally moveable in the ordinary sense of the word. The other
three were originally representations drawn inside the square
diagram on the floor and were equally obviously and literally
immoveable. When later the floor diagram went out of use, and it
became in many places customary to have real stones to represent
the ashlars, the original straight forward distinction no longer in
fact applied, hut it was nevertheless retained by natural
conservatism, and eventually became the subject of symbolical
speculations, resulting finally, so far as America is concerned, in
an exchange of the epithets. Though, as we have noted, the rest of
the Masonic world retains the older usage.

In regard, then, to the immoveable jewels, properly so designated,
the order is, it will be observed, reversed in the French version.
The "brute" or unworked stone is named first, the "tracing board"
last; nevertheless there seems to be substantial agreement. The
rough stone is for the apprentice, the drawing board for the
master, the wrought stone for the Fellows, and it has some
connection with their tools. But in spite of this general agreement
there appears to have been an underlying confusion, for it would
seem as if la pierre cubique a pointe was not a translation o
either the "dinted" or the "square" ashlar, but rather an attempt
to render "broached thurnel" into French; while we can only suppose
that la pierre brute came from something equivalent to Prichard's
"rough" ashlar, which, as we have tried to show, was probably a
wrought stone.

In other words, it would seem that while the things themselves were
correctly remembered and properly assigned to the three grades, the
names of two of them had been transposed; a change that has led to
much subsequent misapprehension and error. We may now ask how the
original confusion arose. It is possible to suppose that the
translator knew that there were two stones, one partly worked or
rough, and one finished for the purposes of a standard. If his
original was something corresponding to Prichard's version he might
very naturally take the so-called "rough" ashlar to be the first of
these two, and this, by elimination, would lead him to suppose that
the broached dornal, or thurnel, was the stone squared for the
purpose of serving as a standard, as Mackey much later seems to
have done also; for under "Ashlar" in his Encyclopaedia he says
that the place of the Perfect Ashlar "was supplied by the Broached
Thurnel," which was, of course, only his interpretation of the
facts as known to him. This, then, would account for the
description cubique. But what was the translator to make of the
term "broached"?

THE ORIGIN OF THE BROACHED THURNEL

Now it has been pointed out, notably by Mackey, and also by others
since he wrote, that in parts of England the word "broche" is still
used as a term for a certain type of church steeple. In France the
word is in common use with the meaning of spit, spindle, pin,
skewer, knitting needle, awl and so on, any object or implement, in
short, that is long, narrow and pointed. It is therefore not
impossible that it might have been translated a pointe. The
objection to this is that one might rather have expected the
translator to have rendered it by d broche, or even, perhaps,
brochee, seeing that the verb brocher, though usually meaning to
work with a needle as in embroidery, is used of shoeing horses
(possibly because of the long, slender head of a farrier's hammer)
and so might conceivably have been transferred to the use of a
sharp mason's hammer or pick in working stone. The point is, it
seems very curious that he should have interpreted it by a local
English usage when he could have used a more literal rendering on
the basis of the French language. It is therefore possible that his
original did not read "broached," but that some attempt had already
been made to explain it in England, or even that it was some
variant operative technical term that he had before him. Had it
been, for instance, "the pointed ornal," or more likely "the
pointed stone," this rendering would have been almost inevitable
supposing the translator did not know exactly what it meant.
Because such a term would not mean to a working mason anything in
the least like the interpretation a non-operative would be apt to
give to it. The latter would very naturally take the epithet to
refer to the shape of the stone, and would thus be led, if he
supposed it to be a worked stone, to picture it in something like
the form we find in the old French designs. An operative, on the
other hand, would take the term to refer to the method of working,
i. e., that it had been done with a "point." Prichard himself says
the "broached" stone was for the apprentices "to learn to work
upon," but the Confession quite unmistakably uses the technical
term and says "to broach," showing that this was a method or
process of working stone; and indeed the word is to be found in the
New English Dictionary with this meaning given to it. As this
anonymous account, the Confession, bears all through it patent
evidence of being in close touch with operative usages we may feel
safe in giving it the preference. Working masons could not possibly
be guilty of the blunder Prichard's version makes in this place
regarding the testing block. We are therefore, on the whole,
inclined to think that the misconception, and the resulting
transposition to correct a supposed mistake, had been made before
this tradition was carried across the English Channel.

Dr. Oliver seems to have been puzzled by it, and in his Dictionary
of Symbolical Masonry remarks that the Broached Thurnel

. . . was one of the original immoveable jewels, and was used for
the E. A. P. to learn to work upon. It was subsequently called the
Brute Stone or Rough Ashlar.

Mackey in his Encyclopedia undertakes to correct this, and under
the same head tells us that

Dr. Oliver, most probably deceived by the use to which it was
assigned, says that it [the Broached Thurnel] was subsequently
called the Rough Ashlar. This is evidently incorrect, because a
distinction is made in the original lecture between it and the
Rough Ashlar, the former being for the Apprentice and the latter
for the Fellowcraft.

TARSEL OR TRASEL BOARD

By the "original lectures," or "Anderson's lectures," as he
elsewhere calls them, Mackey means Prichard's Catechism, which by
the way he apparently knew only in one of the many later reprints,
as he gives the form "Tarsel Board" instead of "Trasel Board." This
uncorrected misprint (as it undoubtedly is) has been another
fertile source of confusion, and has led a number of Masonic
writers into fanciful speculations. There has been another curious
mistake made too, due presumably to the extreme rarity of the early
editions of Prichard and the consequent difficulty in examining
them. For instance, the late G. W. Speth, a good many years ago,
(4) made some notes on the subject of the Broached Thurnel, in
which, by the way, he mentioned that it appeared in the lectures of
an obsolete degree called "Geometrical Master Mason" (as we believe
it is also in the ritual of the Royal Order of Scotland) and he
went on to say:

Prichard's Masonry Dissected of about 1777 (and possibly earlier,
but not in 1730) gives as the three jewels "Tarsel Board, Rough
Ashlar and Broached Thurnel."

The italics in the parenthesis are ours. Much later Bro. Dring, in
his most important paper on The Evolution and Development of the
Tracing or Lodge Board (5) makes a similar statement:

In the later editions of Masonry dissected ( such as that of 1774),
i. e., after the publications of the translations of the French
Rituals, the catechism is amplified thus . .

and he goes on to quote the questions and answers we have already
given relative to the Furniture and Jewels. He refers here to a
number of works published under various titles after 1760, which
were poor translations back into English of the French versions
already spoken of, and he supposes that later publishers of
Prichard's work improved it by borrowing from these.

Now there were four editions of Prichard put out in 1730. (6) They
were all sold out very rapidly and the interval between them is to
be measured in days rather than months. They are also all very
scarce. The first was very carefully reproduced with all its
typographical peculiarities by Enoch T. Carson, the well-known
American Masonic student and bibliophile. It is evident that Bros.
Speth and Dring were familiar with the contents of the original
edition, either directly or through the medium of this reprint, and
that they also respectively knew some later edition, Speth
apparently one of 1777 and Dring a somewhat earlier one of 1774.
They apparently also took it for granted that all the intervening
reprints up to 1760 or 1770 were the same as the original edition.
This, however, was not the case.

An examination of the text of the first edition shows a number of
obvious mistakes, mostly very unimportant in themselves, yet that
cumulatively give the impression that it was a very hasty
production, and that very little time had been given to the proof
reading. In the second edition the greater part of these were
corrected, and besides this eleven questions and answers were also
inserted in the first part. This inserted material includes
precisely the items we are discussing. It thus appears that these
two eminent authorities were misled through not having seen the
second and third editions. Whether Prichard was responsible for
this revision or someone else is a matter of no moment, for, after
all, he is only a name to us. The important point is that this
matter about the Furniture and Jewels, which Bro. Dring supposed to
be borrowed from other works published after 1760, did actually
appear in 1730 within a few weeks of the original publication. In
the second and third editions we have the form "Trasel Board." Not
having had the opportunity to compare a sufficient number of later
reprints we are unable to say when the "r" and "a" were transposed,
but probably much later than 1730; and the transposition is
obviously a printer's error and of no significance whatever. Thus
we find the first mention of moveable and immoveable jewels is
actually in one of the earliest printed accounts that have come
down to us.

ALBERT MACKEY AND DR. OLIVER

Returning now to Mackey's attempt to set Dr. Oliver right, we see
that he was himself mistaken. Inevitably so, we must say, with the
information he had at hand. Nevertheless Dr. Oliver had in reality
correctly stated the sequence of events, which was all he attempted
to do; the "Broached Thurnel" or "roughed" stone for (or of) the
Apprentices had become in French the "Brute Stone," and this
subsequently reappeared in English as a "Rough Ashlar," which,
however, was not really the same thing as that spoken of by
Prichard under the same term. The transposition of names it was
that caused all the confusion. Dr. Oliver assumes a change of
names, which we have seen reason to believe to be what really
happened. Mackey supposes a mistake in ascription--that the wrong
objects were assigned to the two grades in the French versions,
which, curiously, was also done in later versions. [See Note 1.]
The whole matter is very complicated and we only hope that our
attempt to elucidate it has not led to confusion being worse
confounded. It is a good example, however, of the way in which
errors have arsien, that later have had far-reaching results.

The original mistake, it would appear, was in Prichard, or rather
the tradition he represents; of which, we as have suggested above,
there have been other variants now lost, or known to us only
through the French. The key to the puzzle is, we think, to be found
in the Confession. This describes the standard test block as a
"dinted ashalr." On account of the strongly operative character of
this account, we are practically forced tot he conclusion that in
the terminology of Scottish working masons of the time the term
"dinted" would be equivalent to "worked" or "finished." Stone is
finally brought to a smooth surface by the use of a tool now known
in some places as a "bush hammer" or "dressing hammer." In this the
face, or more often both faces, of the head is cut into a number of
grooves of triangular section, thus making a series of sharp
parallel edges. It appears to be the same implement that has been
called the "claw tool" by a number of English writers, on what
authority we do not know. It is spoken of as first coming into
general use at the beginning of the Gothic period of architecture,
when it replaced the rougher work done with the "axe" or "common
gavel." This last is now generally known as a stone mason's hammer.
one in which the "pene," or thin end of the head, is drawn out to
a sharp edge parallel with the handle. Both implements are shown in
the thirteenth century window at Chartres, a drawing of which was
reproduced in the December number last year on page 375. Next month
we will endeavor to show how the finished test block came to be
erroneously described as a "rough ashlar."

NOTES

(1) This is Travenol's Catechisme des Frances Macons, the earliest
French expose extant, though there may been another somewhat
earlier. It was followed in 1745 by Le Sceau Rompu (The Seal
Broken) in which the order of the immoveable jewels is reversed,
beginning with the Tracing Board and ending with the "Brute Stone"
which is ascribed to the Apprentices, the "Pointed cubical stone"
is assigned to the Companions as before, but there is no
explanation of purpose in either case. A second work of Travernol
under a new title repeats this two years later, but a third edition
under yet another title, Le Nouveau Catechisme, changes the earlier
ascription, giving the Brute Stone to the Companions to work on,
and the pointed stone for the Apprentices to sharpen tools. This
was published in 1749. It is obvious that the tradition was strong
in spite of attempts to rationalize it.
(2) This design appeared in THE BUILDER for May, 1925, page 152, as
an illustration to the article by Bro. W.W. Covey-Crump on the
"Evolution of English Lodge Boards."
(3) THE BUILDER, October, 1926, page 313.
(4) A.Q.C. xii, page 205
(5) Ibid. xxix, page 257
(6) Masonic Reprints, No. 1 by John T. Thorp, page 10.
