A PORTRAIT OF ROBBIE BURNS – MAN AND MASON
A Portrait of Robbie Burns Man & Mason R
ove the main streets of Ayr, Edinburgh, lnnellan, or Dunoon. Stop about a hundred people, and ask them; “When is Scotland’ s National Day?” The vast majority would reply, “Why, it’s the 25th of January of course! Patron Saint Andrew (on 30 November) may pass virtually unnoticed. But Scots, wheresoever dispersed over land and water, flock together to hear their native tongue spoken with a decided ancient dialect, feast on haggis, and quaff a few drams of highland whisky, all to honor their favorite son on his birthday. Burns wins these polls every year because he is an ageless man who not only gave the world a great legacy of poetry, but because his gentle philosophies have continued to grow in prominence, day-by-day, and year-by-year. Our Freemasonry embraces no greater name than that of Robert Burns. Almost ROBBIE everyone agrees that he is our greatest lyricist. To this day, 247 years since his birth, he remains an active voice of Freemasonry’s faith, philosophy, ethics, and expectations; its friendship, its pleasure, its passion and its prophecy. More, he is the minstrel of the Scottish people, who expressed the genius of democracy, and the unspoken hopes and dreams of the depressed and humble in every corner of the world. No greater tribute can be paid to any person, than to say that the character of the universe is gentler, brighter, and kinder for his having passed this way. It certainly can be said of Robbie Burns, that his very name is a signet of compassion, personal magnetism, and the joy of brotherly love. We regard Burns, as much for his tenderness as for his strength, and all the more because he was an amiable, thoughtful, and unassuming human being. It is given to very few men, to endure in the hearts of their fellows. The memory and legend of Burns is a vital force uniting men of many lands into a living association of constant faith, persistent hope, and enduring charity. Emerson proclaimed; “The Memory of Burns! — I am afraid heaven and earth have taken too good care of it, to leave me anything to say. The west winds murmur it. Open those windows behind you and harken to the incoming tide, hear what the waves say of it. The doves perched on
Mickey Ander,
Past Master
the eaves of the stone chapel opposite know something about it. The Memory of Burns — every man’s, every boy’s, every girl’s head carries snatches of his songs, and they say them by heart; and what is strangest of all, never learned them from a book, but from mouth to mouth. They are the property of all mankind!” Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759 in a tiny, two-room, clay-thrown, thatch-roofed cottage, on the banks of the Doon, in the district of Kyle, two miles south of the town of Ayr, in rural southwest Scotland. It was a peasant farmer’s home, such as he afterwards described in the immortal poem, “The Coffer’s Saturday Night”, in which poverty was consecrated by piety, where the father was ever faithful and the mother an angel, guarding the blessed things of life. So far as schooling is concerned, his early education was limited to basic grammar, writing, BURNS and arithmetic. Later he picked up a little Latin, a smattering of French, and some knowledge of English and the classic poets. But he knew the albums of nature, leaf-by-leaf, and the peculiar tablet of the human heart, as only the swift insight of genius can decipher them. The mysteries of Freemasonry were conveyed to Robbie Burns in Lodge St. David, at Tarbolton, in July 1781, at the age of twenty-two. The historian Lockhart says, that he was introduced to the Lodge by John Rankine. The record of his initiation reads on July 4th; “Robert Burns in Lochly was entered an Apprentice.” Both the Fellow Crafts and Master Mason Degrees were conferred just a few months later, on the same evening in October. Six years later he was made a Knight Templar as well as a Royal Arch Mason, in Eyemouth. Under the system in operation at that time, the two were always conferred together. By this time he had won some fame as a poet, and the higher degrees were granted in token of his ample reputation as a muse and his zeal as an active Mason. On the 27th of July 1784, he was elected Depute Master of Lodge St. James No.135, Tarbolton, a position he held until 1788. Robbie Burns was unanimously elected an honorary member of Lodge St. John No. 22, in Kilmarnock, on October The Voice of Freemasonry
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