As any Master Mason knows the Master of the Lodge cannot commence his activities and call the lodge to order until the facility is properly tiled by the tyler who must report to the Master that the Lodge is secure against cowans and evesdroppers. Now I can understand why that august fraternity would want to keep away evesdroppers who have no business or need to know the Masonic work, but why cowans? Are we so closely knit as a family that knowledge of masonry would only cement our bonds to an impenatrable degree? Remember that dramatic tale of the messenger racing to the church service to announce that word had been heard that Mary Cowan had escaped the Indian's grasp, and shouted out, is Major so and so here, or any man named Cowan? Get it, not John Cowan, not Samuel, not William, but ANY man named Cowan. That is our legacy, our pride and our honor. These days $24 will get you a good book or a better bottle of whiskey. A whiskey bottle can teach you a lot. Black Bush for instance. It is the "world's oldest whiskey distillery," with an original grant to distil dating from 1608. Now that is before Jamestown, friends. Before the King James Version. Black Bush is a product of Ireland, the north of Ireland, from where most of our grandaddy's and grandma's grandaddys and grandmas hailed. It is also where our kin learned the ancient art of distilling illicit whiskey. There is a picture of one of the olde timey pots on the Black Bush bottle. They called the whiskey "poteen," meaning little pot, because they could distil small amounts of whiskey in it. This is the mountain dew, that which fired the bellys of the Fayette County boys in Pennsylvania in the Whiskey Rebellion and smoked the morning valleys of the Appalachians from West Virginia to Georgia. So there is a story on the whiskey bottle, but it's a pale story beside a book that will give fire and drive to your life, and answer the world's greatest riddle, "Where do YOU come from? I am reading one of these books, "Donegal: History and Society," Geography Publications, Dublin, 1995. It has essays like, "Plantation in Donegal," "British Settler Society in Donegal c. 1625 to 1685," "Derry's Backyard: The Barony of Inishowen." That three out of twenty-eight. These essays get my Irish up. The writers have done their homework. They have gone to the original sources, the land records, the estate accounts, the unpublished manuscripts, the out of print forgotten records. They are scholars, and they tell it like it is. Robert Cowan recently wrote about the Laggan and Inishowen. The laggan is what the highlanders in Inishowen called the lowlands. What is new in these essays and what strikes me so much as important and new is this: The entire Inishowen penisula was granted by King James to one man, Sir Arthur Chichester for his service to the crown in the Irish wars in the 1590's. We have had the Muster Roll of Donegal from 1630 in which there are three Cowans listed among his men. That's old news. The new information is that Chichester granted long term leases to his men, 200 acres to officers, smaller grants to the regular men. Read the history of the Plantation in Ireland. You will never come across that information. The Chichester records are in the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. His heirs became the Lords Donegal. They resided in Belfast. We must haste to seek those records out. How, we ask, how did our ancestors finance their voyages to America? They were not servants, they came as free men. This is the source that financed the emigration of the Ulster Scots from Ireland in the early 1700's. They held leases that had been in the family for 70 years or so, which they sold, they sold in mass and came, wave after wave in the first decades of the 1700'.s from Derry, from Portrush, from Killybegs and Coleraine, all the North of Ireland ports. The second major new hunk of information is that for each planned settlement, five plots of three to five acres each were designated to be held by merchants and craftsmen. Here was a another source of potential funds for emigrants. They sold their shops and wares and re-established themselves in these trades on the North American shores. Immediately abutting Inishowen to the south was the Laggan, the main parish of which was Raphoe. Raphoe was the most densely settled area of the Laggan and the center of the richest farmlands. It is a matter of record, friends. The main center of trade in the Laggan was in St. Johnstown in Raphoe. There we find John Cowan, gent., who came from the backyard of Derry to it's leadership, as Alderman, as High Sheriff, as a leading merchant. And those old soldiers in Inishowen??? Man, they kept the fires hot under those pots. Inishowen... home of poteen, notorious for its whiskey fairs, licensed, of course, to none other that Sir Arthur Chichester. jcmaclay Cowan of Cowansville "I rowed with Knox."

[email protected] wrote: > > As any Master Mason knows the Master of the Lodge cannot commence his > activities and call the lodge to order until the facility is properly tiled > by the tyler who must report to the Master that the Lodge is secure against > cowans and evesdroppers. > > Now I can understand why that august fraternity would want to keep away > evesdroppers who have no business or need to know the Masonic work, but why > cowans? Are we so closely knit as a family that knowledge of masonry would > only cement our bonds to an impenatrable degree? <snip> My great-grandfather Cowan WAS a Master Mason, so this line must have puzzled or amused him. I did ask about this use of the term 'cowan' in some groups where it was used, and found that it meant 'outsider' or 'non-member/non-enlightened one'. I never was able to run down an etymology -- anybody have access to an Oxford Dictionary of the English Language? My own guess is that it has something to do with the meaning of 'cowan' as a builder of stone walls around fields. Thanks for raising the question, jc. Valorie Cowan Zimmerman