Few wholy Masonic words have been so much talked about and so little understood by the average Mason as "COWAN". Every one understands that it is a term of contempt; that it denotes some one wholly without the Masonic circle; but just what its real meaning may be, where the word came from, and how it came into our system is disputed to this day by Masonic scholars.
It is generally - not wholly - agreed that it has a Scotch ancestry. Certain old Scottish books lend color to the theory. According to these sources a COWAN is a man who builds walls without mortar; just as any farm hand in America may do, piling into a wall the stones from nearby streams or turned up in plowing. From this term it came to be used as meaning an uninstructed Mason, a self-taught builder, one not of the trade.
Apparently its earliest appearance is in the Schaw Manuscript, dated 1598. It appears in the second or 1738 edition of Anderson's Constitutions.
Whence came the word? A Greek word KUON means dog, and in early church days infidels were called dogs, probably because of such passages as Matthew 7:6, "Give not that which is holy unto dogs." Old Swedish KUJON means a silly fellow. The french word COYOU means a coward, a base person.
Mackey had a different theory; that COWAN was either a derivationof, or the ancestry of the English word "common". old English spellrd the word both coen and comon. If this is correct, COWAN meaning common, is still a term meaning "common people"> Also, the English "House of Commons" as distinguished from the "House of Lords".
However derived the word is now wholly the property of the Fraternity, not otherwise used, and means to moderns an uninstructed and ignorant person; one not of the Fraternity. Juat as eavesdropper means to us one who attempts to gain the secrets of Freemasonry unlawfully.