Robert Burns

Robert Burns was a poet and lyricist. National poet of Scotland and celebrated worldwide. He was the pioneer of the Romantic Movement and after his death became inspiration to the founders of liberalism.

Burns’ youth was passed in poverty, hardship and labor. He had little regular schooling and got much of what education he had from his father and a tutor who taught him Latin, French and mathematics.

In 1783 he started composing poetry in a traditional style, using Ayrshire dialect. Also, collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. One of the most famous and popular poems in history were written by him – “Auld Lang Syne”, often sung at New Year’s Eve, “A Red, Red Rose”, “A Man’s A Man for A’ That”, “To a Louse” and so on… “Scots Wha Hae” served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of Scotland.

Robert Burns was initiated into Lodge St.David Tarbolton on 4 July 1781, when he was 22. He was passed and raised on 1 October 1781. Later, his lodge became dormant and he joined St.James Tarbolton Kilwinning #135.

He was very active as a mason. On 27 July 1784, Burns became Deputy Master, a position he held until 1788, often honoured with supreme command. He had a real passion for freemasonry and believed that true Masonic friendship cannot be disassociated from the Lodge room. He must have been a very popular and well-respected Deputy Master, since there were more lodge meetings and more attendance during the Burns period, then at any other time.

In early 1787, he joined lodges in Edinburgh, where he was also very respected and in the books was recorded as a “poet”. Edinburgh Freemasons sponsored the publishing of his poems and spread his name and fame across Scotland, England and abroad.

He spent months touring Scotland, first the south and then the High Lands, visiting Lodges and becoming an honorary member of a number of them.

Burns echoed the sentiments of many of his day, calling for “liberty, fraternity and equality”, and speaking out against the excesses of the secular, as well as religious establishment. Most certainly, Burns’s commitment to the ideals of the Enlightenment came from his membership in the Masonic Lodge, much praised and damned for it’s equality, both in political and religious matters, among its members.

But besides these lofty ideals, the lodge also appealed to Burns for other reasons; the camaraderie and spirit of brotherhood that prevailed in the lodge room and the charity towards the widow and orphan. According to William L. Fox in “The Near Miss of Robert Burns”, “He found in the experience [of being a Freemason] something unlike the political and religious institutions that had kept his father in a state of perpetual frustration”(p.7). For Burns, Freemasonry was one of the cures for his society’s numerous social ills.

His works are strongly influenced by the Craft. Many of them can be considered Masonic Hymns. In every single one of his works there is a call for brotherly love, relief, truth. Here is a perfect example for that:

A Man’s A Man For All That

Is there for honest poverty
That hangs his head, and all that?
The coward slave, we pass him by -
We dare be poor for all that!
For all that, and all that,
Our toils obscure, and all that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gold for all that.

What though on homely fare we dine,
Wear course grey woolen, and all that?
Give fools their silks, and knaves their wine -
A man is a man for all that.
For all that, and all that,
Their tinsel show, and all that,
The honest man, though ever so poor,
Is king of men for all that.

You see yonder fellow called ‘a lord,’
Who struts, and stares, and all that?
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He is but a dolt for all that.
For all that, and all that,
His ribboned, star, and all that,
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at all that.

A prince can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and all that!
But an honest man is above his might -
Good faith, he must not fault that
For all that, and all that,
Their dignities, and all that,
The pith of sense and pride of worth
Are higher rank than all that.

Then let us pray that come it may
(As come it will for a’ that)
That Sense and Worth over all the earth
Shall have the first place and all that!
For all that, and all that,
It is coming yet for all that,
That man to man the world over
Shall brothers be for all that.

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in Salzburg, Austria. Being a musical child-prodigy, he toured the country with his father, Leopold and sister Maria Anna for years.

His ability to play complex compositions from memory, to play blindfolded, and ultimately to compose were some of the many musical gifts he had. He worked many years for the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg and then moved to Vienna, the imperial capital and a major cultural centre, working as a freelance composer and musician, though continually seeking a formal appointment at an aristocratic court. Mozart broke with his father when he married Constanze Weber, a singer from a family of impoverished musicians, against Leopold’s wishes. He died at the age of 35.

Mozart composed a number of masonic pieces. When his father received his masonic Second Degree Wolfgang wrote “Fellow Crafts Journey (Op. K468) to honour the occasion. For lodge Zur Wohltatigkeit he wrote “Opening Ode” (Op. K483) and Closing Ode (Op. K484) His last masonic work was written for the dedication of a masonic temple in Vienna on November 15, 1791. The masonic influence and symbolism was present in his operas Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute.

During his life, this incredible genius and one of the most gifted musicians that ever lived, wrote a number of symphonies, operas, concertos, masses and his final Requiem.

Initiated: December 14, 1784
lodge Zur Woltatigkeit
Passed: January 7, 1785
Raised: April 22, 1785
Lodge Zur Wahren Eintracht

Mark Twain
November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910

On Nov. 30, 1835, the small town of Florida, Mo. witnessed the birth of its most famous son. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was welcomed into the world as the sixth child of John Marshall and Jane Lampton Clemens. Little did John and Jane know, their son Samuel would one day be known as Mark Twain – America’s most famous literary icon.

When Samuel was 12, his father died of pneumonia, and at 13, Samuel left school to become a printer’s apprentice. After two short years, he joined his brother Orion’s newspaper as a printer and editorial assistant. It was here that young Samuel found he enjoyed writing.

On a voyage to New Orleans down the Mississippi, the steamboat pilot, “Bixby”, inspired Clemens to pursue a career as a steamboat pilot, the third highest paying profession in America at the time, earning $250 per month ($155,000 today). He became a licensed river pilot in 1858.

Clemens’ pseudonym, comes from his days as a river pilot. He used different pen names before deciding on Mark Twain. He signed humorous and imaginative sketches “Josh” until 1863. Additionally, he used the pen name “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass” for a series of humorous letters. He maintained that his primary pen name, “Mark Twain”, came from his years working on Mississippi riverboats. It is a river term which means two fathoms or 12-feet when the depth of water for a boat is being sounded. “Mark twain” means that is safe to navigate.

Missouri was a slave state and considered by many to be part of the South, but it did not join the Confederacy. When the war began, Clemens and his friends formed a Confederate militia (depicted in an 1885 short story, “The Private History of a Campaign That Failed”), and joined a battle where a man was killed. Clemens found he could not bear to kill a man, and deserted. His friends joined the Confederate Army; Clemens joined his brother, Orion, who had been appointed secretary to the territorial governor of Nevada, and headed west.

Twain began to gain fame when his story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County” appeared in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865. Twain’s first book, “The Innocents Abroad,” was published in 1869, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” in 1876, and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in 1885. He wrote 28 books and numerous short stories, letters and sketches.

He was initiated in Masonry on May 22, 1861, and raised July 10, 1861, in Polar Star Lodge #79, Missouri.
In 1909, Twain is quoted as saying:

I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.Mark Twain passed away on April 21, 1910.

From “Adam’s Diary” (1904):

“…MONDAY.–This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don’t like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals…. Cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain…. WE? Where did I get that word– the new creature uses it.

TUESDAY.–Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on the estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls– why, I am sure I do not know. Says it LOOKS like Niagara Falls. That is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. I get no chance to name anything myself. The new creature names everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest. And always that same pretext is offered–it LOOKS like the thing. There is a dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it “looks like a dodo.” It will have to keep that name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than I do.

WEDNESDAY.–Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to myself in peace. The new creature intruded. When I tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress. I wish it would not talk; it is always talking. That sounds like a cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so. I have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. And this new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only to sounds that are more or less distant from me.

FRIDAY. The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty– GARDEN OF EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not any longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. Says it LOOKS like a park, and does not look like anything BUT a park. Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. And already there is a sign up:

KEEP OFF THE GRASS
“My life is not as happy as it was…”

Alexander Fleming
August 6, 1881 – March 11, 1955

One of the most important discoveries of the 20th century was the penicillin. The man who discovered it, was a fellow Mason, one of the most respected men of his time – Alexander Fleming.

Born at Lochfield near Darvel in Ayrshire, Scotland on August 6th, 1881. He attended St. Mary’s Medical School, London University. Served throughout World War I as a captain in the Army Medical Corps.

In 1928, while working on influenza virus, he observed that mould had developed accidently on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mould had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He was inspired to further experiment and he found that a mould culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He named the active substance penicillin. That discovery has changed the modern medicine and saved milions of lives.

In 1945, he received the Nobel Prize for medicine.Alexander Fleming was initiated in 1909, at Sancta Maria Lodge #2682 in London and was also a member of Misericordi Lodge #3286, also in London. He was a Past Junior Grand Warden of UGLE.