THE BUILDER April, 1927

The Precious Jewels

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

IN the Study Club last month we discussed the probability that an apparent
confusion in the early references to the ashlars as jewels of the lodge was
due, at least in part, to a technical expression of working masons having been
later understood in its more general sense by non-operative brethren which
resulted in an actual reversal meaning. The original finished test-block
becoming th e "rough ashlar," the stone in its native state as taken from the
quarry, and the partly worked, or roughed-out stone becoming t h e later
"perfect ashlar," the stone squared and polished and ready to be set and
adjusted by the implements of the Fellowcraft. Dint, or dent, the terms in
question are variant forms of the same word, which means, as a verb, to strike
or beat, and as a noun the marks or indentations caused by blows. A stone
worked with the "bush hammer" or "claw tool" shows a surface covered with fine
parallel indentations. Though such a surface is far from being a true plane it
may nevertheless, if well wrought, be a quite sufficiently close approximation
thereto for the comparatively coarse trying and testing required for ordinary
stone work--it would not have done for such work as that of the Great Pyramid
for example, where the thickness of the joints of the casing was no more than
that of tissue paper, but such work was not done by the Mediaeval craftsmen,
not because they were unable had it been demanded, but because it was not
required in their style of architecture, in which fine jointing of the stones
played little part. Before all things they were practical men, and believed as
fully as modern production experts in economy of labor. It is always to be
noticed in Gothic mouldings, capitals and carving, that the work is carefully
designed to involve the minimum of cutting away of the stone. It therefore did
not concern them to work the faces of the joints any finer than was required
for stability in the erection.

It might be well worth while to find out, if anyone interested were in a
position to do so, whether dint or dent is ever used in this sense by stone
masons in Scotland or the north of England at the present time, or during the
last century. It may be noted, however, that the New English Dictionary under
"Dent" gives the following fifteenth century quotation from Trevisa:

"After many manere castynge, hewyng dentynge and planynge."

This would seem by the context to confirm the supposition that "to dent" was
used as a technical term, though it gives no indication of the process to
which it was applied. Casting is proper only of metals, planing would
naturally refer to wood work, hewing might be either of wood or stone, and if
the latter, denting might have been so intended also. The finishing process
above described is the only one known to us to which the term would be at all
applicable. Another rather curious obsolete use of the word is given, namely,
"to smooth," but not in the usual sense of making a smooth surface, but that
of neutralizing the "sharpness" of an acid. The analogy underlying this use
may however be that of subduing the strength of the acid or corrosive fluid,
and thus to be equated with such a phrase as "by dint of arms," for example. 

Another explanation is also possible and one not so far removed as to be
incompatible. The Confession tells us that the "dinted ashlar" was not only
used "to adjust the square" but also to "make the gages by." Gage or gauge, in
old French Iauge or Jauge, is a very comprehensive word, and is applied to all
kinds of measuring appliances, and to a considerable extent to special or
standard measurements themseves. It is not now often, if ever, used for a
graduated rod or scale for determining linear distances in terms of some unit
of length, such as the foot or the metre, though it is so used in modern
Speculative phraseology. This may well be a survival of what was once common
usage, but we have not been able to find any independent examples confirming
it. A Scottish form of the word is Gadge. The Examination and the Mystery both
inform us that . . Square, Compass and Common Gudge" are necessary to a just
and perfect lodge; while the famous Haughfoot Minute of 1702 (1) and the
Chetwode Crawley MS. both speak of a "Common Judge." These references must be
to some measuring implement of very general application in order to account
for the epithet "common" being applied to it in the first of these references.
In the passage from the Confession quoted in a preceding article (2)
respecting the five points in the Square, we find the Handrule and the Gage
given as the fourth and fifth, respectively. The Rule is essentially a
straight-edge, but in modern usage the term is usually applied to a measuring
rod, such as, for instance, a two-foot rule. But of course the most natural
and obvious form of an instrument of linear measurement is a straight-edge
marked with feet and inches or whatever it may be. We are, however, inclined
to think that rule or hand-rule here means a straight-edge pure and simple, as
such "rules" are very necessary in stone-cutting and they take a form not at
all convenient for measuring purposes. If so, we must conclude that "gage" in
Scottish operative usage was a measuring rod or scale.

STANDARDS OF MEASUREMENT

The question of standards of measurement does not often come to our notice in
everyday life. Rulers and yard-sticks and tape measures are so abundant and
accurate that we accept them just as we do many other things civilization
gives us. The immense amount of scientific knowledge, of care and skill, that
lies behind their standardization, preservation and reproduction is realized
by very few. It is a far cry from the time when twenty-five men, taken at
random as they came out of church after hearing Mass on Sunday morning, were
made to stand in a row each with his toe touching the heel of the man in front
and the whole distance covered taken to be twenty-five feet, and accepted as a
standard for the regulation of yard-sticks and ell-wands and so on in the
neighborhood. Yet this and kindred methods were used, and were much more
nearly accurate than might be supposed, being based on the principle of
averaging differences. In England there were Royal Standards from very early
times, but they were far off--at Winchester or London--and not easily
accessible, so that local standards of all kinds were in use. It is therefore
not impossible that in a permanent working lodge of Masons there should have
been a standard unit of measurement; and if there were also, as we have
concluded, a standard testing block, it would be the most natural thing to
incise the unit of length upon it. With one edge marked in feet and inches it
would be possible to make a measuring rod out of any stick or piece of lath
for a given purpose, or enable new-comers to make gages for themselves if
their old ones varied from the local unit. The word "dented" might thus be
taken as meaning "indented," in the sense of havling a standard scale of feet
and inches engraved upon it. However upon the whole, though the evidence of
the Confession seems to point to something of this sort, and though it appears
probable enough in itself, the term seems more likely to have been derived
from the method of finishing the surface of the stone.

We are now, perhaps, in a position to solve provisionally the problem raised
by Prichard's use of the word "rough" to designate the ashlar. While "dinting"
may possibly have been a technical term for finishing stone, to dint or dent
in general usage implied the injuring of a surface by accidental or
destructive blows, as indeed it still is. We suggest therefore that the change
may have come about through the term "dented" being misunderstood by
non-operatives by being taken in the common sense of the word, the whole
answer having become a mere unintelligible formula to them; and that someone,
in trying to reproduce what he had heard, used another word that to him
appeared to mean the same thing. But whether this was the way in which the
error arose or not it seems quite certain that an error there was, and that
the Confession must be taken as better representing the original. We shall
find later on further confirmation of the use of the word "dinted" as a
qualification of the ashlar.

THE BROACHED THURNEL

The third of this group of "jewels" now comes up for more extended
consideration. A great deal has been written on the subject and much ingenuity
displayed, a good deal of which we can only think misplaced. Mackey in the
article already referred to takes "Thurnel" to be derived from tournell, old
French for a turret, or small tower. He says, speaking of the "pointed cubic
stone" of the French charts:

On inspection, it will be at once seen that the Broached Thurnel has the form
of a little square turret with a spire springing from it. And he goes on to
quote Parker's Glossary of Terms in Architecture to the effect that broach or
broche denotes

. . . a spire springing from the tower without any intervening parapet;
and so concludes that the mysterious phrase simply meant "the Spired Turret"
and adds:

It was a model on which apprentices might learn the principles of their art,
because it presented to them, in its various outlines, the forms of the square
and the triangle, the cube and the pyramid.

The less said about this, however, as a method for instruction in the art of
the Gothic builders the better. (3)

Others, unfortunately, have taken up the idea and elaborated it, chiefly along
symbolic lines. Here we are unable to follow them; our attempt to elucidate
these survivals is based on the general hypothesis that their origin is to be
found in a real craft organization, and not in a mystical, philosophical
school of occultism somehow mixed up with Operative Masons, or masquerading as
such. On this general theory we are forced to reject the idea that any
elaborate object such as this should have been made by practical men for
purely symbolic purposes. One great characteristic of Gothic work is its
honesty and frankness. Nothing is put in merely for decoration or because it
would look well; the ornament is all made out of the essential parts of the
structure, and as has been remarked by many writers on the subject the more
important the member structurally the more prominently it was emphasized by
moulding and carving. It would not be unnatural for such men to symbolize and
moralize their tools and their methods of working, but it does not seem at all
in keeping to suppose that they dragged in such an artificial and, in a sense,
purely gratuitous symbol as this would have been. Besides, the fundamental
point has not been touched--that this stone was to be worked on, not examined
or studied--and the work was of a kind that was, in some places at least,
called broaching.

BROACH AND BROACHING

Now broaching is still a process used in mechanical engineering, and a broach
is a file-like tool used for forming holes in metal; chiefly for holes of
angular or irregular shape, as the drill is better for circular ones.

Bro. Speth pointed out long ago (4) that in Scotland the term "broached work"
is used for stones that are rough hewed, and that there is a tool, called a
Thurnal, Thurmer or Turner, which is used "to broach" with. It is apparently
the same thing that is called a Pricket or Prichet in some parts of England,
and in America is sometimes called a Point. It is a chisel drawn out with four
faces instead of two, and brought, not quite to an actual point, but nearly
enough so to leave only a cutting edge of from three-sixteenths to one-quarter
of an inch in widtih. It is purely a "roughing out" tool, and is used
especially in working granite. Speth therefore suggested that the Broached
Thurnel was really the Broaching-thurmal; and it must be admitted that the
suggestion is a very attractive one. The difficulty is that to accept it we
have to suppose another error in both Prichard and the Confession. This we
should be quite content to do if it affected the former only, but the author
of the Confession, as we have said before, is so close to the operative
practice of his day, and is so explicit in his statement that it was for the
apprentice "to learn to broach upon," that in him such a mistake seems highly
improbable.

There seems little doubt that the real solution of the mystery is that
advanced by Bro. Dring (5), which is that Thurmal or Dornal is derived from
Ornel, the name of "a kind of soft white building stone." The New English
Dictionary gives several examples of the word from old documents, as for
example one of date 1442.

Fraughtage of x tonne of ornell fro london vn to ye College. 

It was sometimes spelled Urnel, and a record of 1348 is quoted:

Eidem pro ijs pedibus de Vrnel emptis pro eodem in grosso xv. s.

Dr. Craigie suggested that Dornal came from the French d'Ornaulx, "of Ornal,"
but we are inclined to think that Bro. Dring's theory is more probable, that
the "d" sound was carried over from the preceding word by prothesis. Broached
ornal or urnal, could very easily become broached dornal when transmitted
orally. And it is very easy for a "d" sound to be changed to "th," especially
in Scottish dialect. We are inclined to this supposition because other
instances of the same thing have happened. Bro. Dring himself quotes a very
amusing instance. A certain brother wanted lo identify the plant called
Vacacia, and must have been rather taken aback when it was explained to him
that it was a "sprig of Acacia" that was referred to and not "of Vacacia." The
broached dornal or thurnel would on this hypothesis be a piece of "ornal"
roughed out and ready to be finished; a partly worked stone in short.

SPECULATIVE TECHNIQUE

Some rather curious notions of the technique of building have been derived by
zealous Freemasons, based not on any knowledge of the occupation but purely on
the allocation of working tools in the different degrees. It seems very
curious that such absurd and baseless ideas should ever have been seriously
advanced, when it would have been so easy to obtain information on the
subject. Yet such "explanations" are to be found even in the works of those
who are regarded, and justly, as authorities in the Craft. The Speculative
Entered Apprentice is given a two-foot rule and a common gavel-- or in England
a mallet and chisel. From this it has been inferred apparently--of course the
interest was purely symbolic---that the stones were cut by the Apprentices,
while the Craftsmen stood round with plumb square and level to set them as
soon as they were finished--this process of setting or laying being supposed -
-again for purely symbolical reasons--to be much more skilled work than merely
cutting the stones. One would suppose that if the unfortunate apprentices had
only gage and gavel to work with that the Fellowcrafts would not find the
stones very true or easy to lay-- except as rough or rubble work. Finally the
master holds the trowel and spreads the mortar. Perhaps this bold invention of
a suppositious operative technique is not of very great importance, yet it
would have been possible to have based the symbolism on facts had there been
any desire to seek for them. At least to any one with practical knowledge the
whole effect of the moral teaching is lost in the contemplation of the
ludicrous absurdities involved on the technical silde. The worst is that this
is all comparatively recent. In the earlier rituals the Apprentice alone was
given tools, and these included a square. This procedure was much closer to to
what must have been operative practice. To give the Apprentice his tools
formally was as appropriate as to give him an apron, but before he could pass
Fellow he had to learn the whole craft, to use all the tools. To give them to
him later would be meaningless. Technically, of course, the "marking off" and
"roughing out" a stone is no task for a novice. When we consider all the
factors that have to be taken into account, the natural bed of stone, the best
way to get most out of it and so on, it is seen to require much skill and
experience, although it not unnaturally seems (to the purely speculative mind)
the proper place for the Apprentice to begin.

Without doubt the first tasks he was actually given were such things as
running errands, taking tools to the smith, bringing beer for the men, and
cleaning and tidying up, but such duties would hardly fit into a symbolic
scheme! As a matter of fact, using the "claw tool" or bush hammer to finish
the surface that had been rouhly wrought by a skilled craftsman would be the
kind of mason work he would be first taught.

However, our best authority says that on this stone he was to learn how to
"broach," which we have taken to mean the process of roughing out. A
consideration of the method by which a stone is worked down to a plane surface
may help us. Stone used for cut or carve work is always of such an internal
structure that it is naturally inclined to break along certain planes. It
would not be good to "work" otherwise, and would be rejected as waste, or used
for foundations or for "rubble masonry."

SQUARING A STONE

But the blocks, as broken out of the quarry, are only very approximately
square, though enough so to make the lines on which they should be cut fairly
obvious. The first thing is to obtain a basis to work from. Usually what are
to be the ends will have the largest excrescencies knocked off with the hammer
or common gavel, by eye, so as to make it possible to mark a straight line
with a straight-edge and chalk; or charcoal perhaps if the stone were white.
Then with mallet and chisel a draft or drift, sometimes rather erroneously
spoken of as a "bevel" by Masonic writers, is run across the end; that is, a
narrow flat surface is worked, the line drawn being a guide to the depth, and
the width no greater than is needed to give a resting place for the
straight-edge; a little wider than the chisel edge as a rule. The surface of
this cut is finished with some care till the straight-edge will touch it all
along. The next step is to mark off the opposite end, and the problem is to
get the second draft in the same plane as the first when the intervening
surface is not only rough but also, of course, higher than the line worked.
Two straight-edges are used--usually hoards about an inch thick, three or four
feet long and four inches or so wide, the two edges planed true and parallel.
One of these is rested on the surface of the draft already cut, the second is
held against the other end of the stone by one man, while another from the
distance of a few feet "sights" over the upper edge, the man holding it moving
it according to directions until it coincides with the line of the other. Then
the mark is made and the second draft is run. This when being finished is not
only tested for straightness but also for "winding." The workman keeps
stepping back and sighting until he is satisfied that the two straight edges
are in line. If they are not, one end of that further away will be hidden when
the other end is visible. It is a simple device, but one that is capable, with
care, of very accurate results. The next steps are comparatively simple. All
that has to be done is to mark the sides in line with the ends of the two
drafts already cut, and then work down to it. This done, there is a narrow
ledge all round the stone cut down to the plane required. From this, by means
of the square, lines can be marked out for the corners, which when done will
determine the surfaces of the sides and ends. It is usual, however, to finish
one surface before going further. This finishing consists of two processes, a
roughing out and a finishing proper, and it is the roughing out that was
probably meant by broaching or pointing. The apprentice put on to this work
would have the drafts to guide him, and could test his work as he proceeded by
simply laying a straight edge across it.

The conclusion that seems legitimate in view of all these considerations is
that the Catechism which comes nearest to a real operative tradition said that
the jewels of the lodge consisted of a square pavement, or floor upon which
plans could be drawn full size in chalk or charcoal; a carefully finished
stone with accurately cut angles placed with its surfaces exactly
perpendicular and horizontal, and possibly marked with standard units of
length, for adjusting or making the measuring and testing tools by; and last a
roughed out or partly worked stone which was to be the first real introduction
of the Apprentice to the technical manipulations of the Craft.

NOTES
(1) Gould's Concise History, p. 189, and also Essays, p. XXI.
(2) THE BUILDER, Feb., 1927, p. 56.
(3) Since this was written a passage in Agricole Perdiguier on the
Compagnonage has come to our notice, in which he describes the methods by
which the Compagnons instructed the junior members in a kind of trade school.
It is possible that he has rather heightened the effect in his description in
order to glorify the organization of which he was a devoted member, but it is
not likely that what he says is without foundation in fact. His description is
not very definite, but he speaks of a kind of erection that was used as a
model or concrete illustration of different kinds of mouldings, jointings and
so on. One gets the impression that it was something like an elaborate gothic
pinnacle, or like the bases on which market or churchyard crosses were
erected. He notes that it was criticised by some as useless as such work was
then no longer used, so that it would appear to have been a survival. The
passage certainly appears to give some support to Mackey's idea, if we suppose
that a cubic block surmounted by a pyramid was a degraded representative of
such a structural model. We do not think, however that it affects the argument
advanced in the article, though it seems possible that the actual form taken
by the Broached Thurnel in France may have been due to an infiltration of
ideas from the working masons and their methods in that country.
(4) A.Q.C. XII, p. 205.
(5) Ibid, XXIX, p. 261.
