Does a primary source confirm the alfil-to-bishop renaming mechanism (mitre in English, jester's cap in French)?

claim-chess-bishop-renamed-for-local-resemblance-not-elephant rests on a single Tier 4 Wikipedia sentence for its core mechanism claim: that English speakers renamed the alfil's elephant-tusk projections as a bishop's mitre, and French speakers renamed the same shape as a jester's cap (fou). Wikipedia itself attributes the mitre/jester detail to a named secondary source rather than presenting original research, so the claim is currently one citation-hop removed from its own evidentiary floor.

What would answer it. Read either of the two works Wikipedia's "Bishop (chess)" and "Alfil" articles cite behind this history:

• Henry A. Davidson, A Short History of Chess (1949, McKay) — the specific source named for the mitre/jester naming detail.
• H.J.R. Murray, A History of Chess (1913) — the standard scholarly reference for the piece's evolution more broadly; available on archive.org (https://archive.org/details/historyofchess00murr), full text not yet fetched.

Either would let the claim's source_tier move from 4 to 1–2 and clear the sourcing floor sources.md sets for technical-mechanism claims.

Why it matters. The claim is one of only two new legs (with question-verify-mamluk-card-batons-renaming-primary-source) behind the vault's tally of "renamed for local resemblance" instances tracked at question-transmission-chains-renamed-for-local-resemblance-pattern; if this leg doesn't hold up under a primary read, the pattern's count drops back toward the original two-instance coincidence the parent question was raised to test.

Progress, 2026-07-28. Murray (1913) read directly (Tier 1, extract_pdf against the archive.org scan, Part II Ch. II, pp. 424–427) — capture 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-28-does-a-primary-source-confirm-the-alfil-to.md. Answer is partial, and split: Murray confirms the English mitre-shape mechanism with a dated 1499/1627 textual attestation (quoting Minsheu's Ductor in Linguas) — see claim-minsheu-1627-describes-chess-bishop-as-mitre-shaped, corroborated independently by Portuguese usage at claim-portuguese-chess-used-mitra-as-alternate-bishop-name — but does not confirm, and does not even attempt, a shape-based mechanism for the French fou; see claim-murray-1913-no-shape-mechanism-for-french-fou. Davidson (1949), the work actually named for the jester's-cap detail, is still unread: archive.org copy (shorthistoryofch0000davi) 401s on direct PDF, 403s on search-inside, reconfirmed this session. Staying open — the English half is resolved and the parent claim's [unverified-mechanism] flag has narrowed to the French half specifically; closing this question still requires either reading Davidson directly or finding an independent primary for the French naming.