INTRUDERS AND COWANS
During the opening of the Lodge, the WM asks and the JW answers:
Q: The duty of the Tyler?
A: Being armed with a drawn sword to keep off all intruders and cowans.......
Who are those intruders and cowans?
The origin is unknown and it does not appear in our rituals until the middle 1700’s.
The first mention of the term "cowan" appeared in the English Masonic document in 1723 by a Scottish Freemason Dr James Anderson as part of his book titled "The Constitutions of Free-Masons" which he stated "free and accepted Masons shall not allow cowans to work with them; nor shall masons be employed by cowans without an urgent necessity and even in that case, they must not teach cowans, but must have a separate communication with them" (Dr James Anderson, 1723).
It was used to describe a man who practiced Masonry, usually of the roughest character or nature as in the building of walls, who had been irregularly and imperfectly trained and neither properly initiated nor fully completed his apprenticeship in the profession.
If a man had learned the work by some illegal or unapproved method he was then a cowan.
A cowan, in operative times was certainly an intruder or as it could have been called an "eavesdropper" meaning one who spies on a Lodge and may be such without having learned anything about it before.
Robert Freke Gould in his book "History of Freemasonry" (6 volumes) stated a cowan as "a worker who did not have the secret word of recognition as adopted by Freemasons" (Robert Freke Gould, 1884).
The ancient Scottish Lodge of Kilwinning recorded that in the year 1646 in the month of December as well as in the year 1656 in the month of January the Lodge finned a brother named Hue Mure ten pounds for working with cowans.
(This is an extract from Robert Lomas's book "The secret of Freemasonry" 2006, page 98).
(see: Tetraktys.co.uk/the cowaninfreemasonry/).
The word's signification as a Masonic term can also be found in the Scottish language.
John Jamieson, in his Dictionary of the Scottish Language, gives us the following meanings of the word: Cowan.
"1. One who does the work of a mason, but has not been regularly bred. 2. One who builds dry walls" (John Jamieson, 1867, page 130).
A dry waller was a builder whose skill was mainly to keeping a structure - a wall - together by using only stones. That means by utilising stones' own weight rather than using mortar.
We therefore may state, that a cowan is a person unacquainted with the secrets of Freemasonry.
In essence, cowans and intruders could be defined as those people who are not qualified to be admitted to open Lodge.
REFERENCES:
Dr James Anderson, The Constitution of Freemasons, (1723), London
Robert Freke Gould, History of Freemasonry, (1884), London,
John Jamieson, Dictionary of the Scottish Language, (1867), Edinburgh, William P. Nimmo
Good explanation, well done