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The gavel, actually the iron axe, or
pick, having a steel edge, or point, with which the quarryman roughly
trims the stone, represents the force of conscience. The form of gavel
adopted for the speculative's convenience is a wooden mallet, itself a
small form of the maul (maul-ette).A chairman's mallet, as well as the
Master's gavel, is a wooden hammer whose outline suggests that of the
operative's axe, but also resembles the end-wall of a gabled house, for
which latter reason it is said-but whether truthfully or not we do not
know-it derives its name of gavel, a name apparently of American origin,
and not known in England before the nineteenth century. The uses of gavel
and maul are frequently confused. The gavel, the implement of both the
Master and his Wardens, is an emblem of power, by means of which they
preserve order in the lodge; but the maul is the heavy wooden hammer with
which the mason drives his chisel. Being the weapon with which the Master
was traditionally slain, it is an emblem of violent death and
assassination. In Proverbs xxv, 18, we find this curious figure of speech:
"A man that beareth false witness against his neighbor is a maul, and a
sword, and a sharp arrow." In many lodges the gavel is used by the Master
at a significant point in the third ceremony where the correct implement
is the heavy maul, which was used in the early English lodges and is still
used in some lodges to-day. In the Fabric Rolls of York Minster of 1360 a
type of maul, or mell, is called a keevil. The word must have long
continued in use, because we find it in a published description, dated
1791, of how stones for the Eddystone lighthouse were worked. Both gavel
and maul have been commonly known as a 'Hiram.' The Old Dundee Lodge
bought in 1739 a set of three 'Hiram's,' and we believe that in the old
Bristol lodges the maul is presented under the name of the 'Hiram' to the
incoming Master. The name is explained by associating Hiram's direction of
the work of building the Temple with the Master's direction of the work of
the lodge; but it seems more likely that the name derives from the use of
the maul for its peculiar purpose in the Third Degree. The present writer
has seen a particularly heavy-looking maul put to realistic work in an
American lodge, and it can well be imagined that some of the old English
lodges knew how to use such a tool with tremendous effect, particularly if
judged from a schedule of the property of the Orthes Lodge (a military
lodge moribund from about 1869) which included "a heavy maul, padded;
handle, 3 feet; top, 1 foot." This was more beetle than maul. An unusual
setting maul of T shape in ceremonious use in an old Bristol lodge (it is
shown in A.Q.C., xlix, a plate following p. 168) has a short handle, but
its double head is much longer than the total length of the handle, and
each of the two striking parts is of padded leather secured by
brass-headed nails to the turned-wood foundation-altogether a remarkably
'arresting' tool.
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