Museums these days are so keen to count their clientele and steer them shopwards that an army of lackeys are employed to propel them through the portals; not so the Grand Lodge of Scotland Museum, Queen Street, Edinburgh. After a brief and solitary loiter on the step, I passed on the two moribund-looking bells in the wall and went for a newer one set in a brass door panel. Its distant ring was followed by a friendly click. I chose one of the three sets of imposing doors and happily the handle gave under my hand. Safely inside I climbed the stairs and found myself in the showcase of Scottish Freemasonry.
    The display is divided between two rooms, the first oak-panelled and packed with aprons, furniture, glass, jewels, medals, trowels and documents, the second a recent expansion newly equipped with state of the art cases and lighting which show off silver and pottery to advantage. Here is a glimpse into a world of craftsmanship, symbolism and morality.
    I learnt a lot. James VI (1st of England), who tends to be everyone’s hero, is suspected of being a Freemason. The title page of his Authorised Version of the Bible is packed with masonic symbolism and he had Adam and Eve sew fig leaves together and make themselves aprons. (Perhaps there were not enough leaves to make kilts.)
    A fine 18th century box made in oak illustrates how the ‘boxmasters’ or treasurers of old kept an eye on the lodge monies and papers. It has three locks and three keys, so for access, all three key-holders would have to be present, making a solitary, surreptitious peep inside impossible. This example had been made in 1727 by Bro William Murray and used by the Freemasons at Haughfoot, Toursouce Estate who had paid him for “wood and work”, the sum of £1.10 Scots. The tradition of gifts is much in evidence – a scroll holder from India borne on two elephants, a statuette of Cain from Denmark, stone from King Solomon’s Quarries, silver from Turkey.
    “Let masonry from Pole to Pole Her sacred laws expand” …goes the poem on a pink and green pottery jug. It certainly has.
    The curator, Robert Cooper, cleared the air on the matter of mallets, mauls and gavels. While a gavel is an English tool for bringing a company to order, (origin unknown, I notice) mallets and mauls are masonry tools proper. Mauls, which some dictionaries give as a diminutive, are used as gavels in Scotland. The museum’s collection is fascinating. They all have a thinnish handle and a fat base but their provenance is extremely varied; there are mauls fashioned from bits of salvaged ships from the Armada, one made “from oak taken from the Lodge rooms of Lodge Mother Kilwinning (built 1588 and rebuilt 1779),” one made from wood from Jerusalem, one made from part of the first steamboat built by William Symington in 1801 and one made from a bit of the roof of Glasgow Cathedral. “Waste not, want not” I observed facetiously to the curator. “Well, they were in a good position to salvage materials. Scottish Freemasonry can be traced right back to the operatives of the 16th century. Here are the oldest written masonic records in the world. We know the men who built St Giles Cathedral were given leave by the Town Council to build themselves a lodge, and when they had finished they packed away their tools and went off to work on Elgin Cathedral. Craftsmenship, stone and wood – that’s what it was all about. Re-cycling is part of the business.” We moved on. “You’ll notice,” he said, peering into another case “that the quality of the newer medals and jewels is not what it was. Pre-war the available materials were far finer. Compare the enamelling.”
    Robert Cooper is a fund of information that straddles continents. “See this list of names. It’s the members of the St Andrew’s Lodge, Boston, on the eve of the War of Independence. Paul Revere, the Secretary, a silversmith, probably organised the Boston Tea Party and Joseph Warren,” he ran his finger down the paper, “signed the Declaration of Independence.”
    There are enquiring visitors spilling in all year, many off the open-topped buses which pass beneath the windows and whose guides will have told them what lurks above. Oh, and there is the dust. The developers in the next door building, finding three floors inadequate for their needs are busy excavating a brand new basement. There is a democracy in dust. It spreads over everywhere, including over the Duke of Windsor’s engraved glasses which will soon have to be taken out and washed. A recently acquired long case clock rich with masonic detail and a bough from the cedar of Lebanon both sport a thin grey covering.
    In the office a research student was buried in a heavy tome. Next to her lay a recently published slim, green book written by the curator. It is not about Freemasonry. It is about the origins and history of the Free Gardeners whose records appear firstly in 1676. (See the review in this issue). Gradually their members defected to Freemasonry, perhaps because they were too argumentative to set up a strong Grand Lodge. Finding their origins in the Garden of Eden their poetry suggests they took a dim view of Eve and her like.

“…some o’her dochters aye keep us uneasy –
Mischief-making pests frae the day o’ their birth.
There are exceptions, nae doot, nae man can deny it –
Some better, some waur, as their passions prevail;
But you will find, if you only have patience and try them,
The serpent yet lurks in their tongue or their tail.”

The Freemasons who gave the romantic poet Burns such encouragement would hopefully not have tolerated this chauvinist doggerel. Their womenfolk, after all, were happy to work a tapestry firescreen with masonic symbols or stitch the tartan trimmed aprons on show in the museum. The demise of the Gardeners in favour of Freemasonry could have a feminine twist.