The Records Of An Ancient Lodge.

THE RECORDS OF AN ANCIENT LODGE .

BY . W . PEED . VERNON , P . M . NO . 58 , S . C . BELIEVING that anything which tends to throw a light upon the ancient working of the Craft must be of more or less interest to the brethren generally , we have for some time past devoted our leisure to the ransacking of lod

ge records whenever or wherever they could be obtained . The results of some of our investigations in connection with the Loclge of Kelso , whose records date from 1701 , and the Lodge of Yetholm , which was started in the ever-memorable year of 1745 , have already appeared in these pages and in the Scottish Freemason , in which we are now giving extracts from the minute books of the Lodge of St . Ebbe , No . 70 on the roll of Scottish lodges , whose admirabl

y kept records date from 1757 . In the present series of papers we purpose giving extracts from the minute book of a lodge which claims to be one of the oldest lodges in Scotland . Bro . Murray Lyon , in his admirable work , the " History of the Loclge of Edinburgh , " says truly that " The Scotch are less ambitious than the English in their ascri ption of remote antiquity to the introduction of the Masonic Fraternit y into their country . While their southern neighbours , " he says " hold it to have been organized at York , in the time of Athelstane , A . D . 926 , Scottish Freemasons are content to trace their

descent from the builders of the Abbeys of Holyrood , Kelso , Melrose , and Kilwinning , the Cathedral of Glasgow , and other ecclesiastical fabrics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries . " If , in the absence of documentary evidence , we were to accept the dates of the erection of these ecclesiastical buildings as the dates of the introduction of Masonry into the various districts of Scotland , and the lodges now representing these districts were to take rank accordingly , it would be found that Kelso stood firstEdinburgh secondMelrose thirdand

, , , Kilwinning fourth . Kelso Abbey was finished ancl solemnl y dedicated to St . Mary and St . John on the 2 nd of May , 1128 , the year Holyrood was begun , while Melrose was not erected till 1136 , and Kilwinning till 1140 . Upon the roll of Scottish lodges , however , Kilwinning stands as No . 0 , Edinburgh No . 1 , KelsoNo . 58 , and Melrose , not having ownedfealt y to the Grand Loclge , has no standing—isin factunrecognisedIt is from the records of this unrecognised

, , . lod ge that we purpose making extracts . There are very few lodges , either in England or Scotland , which can produce documentary evidence of having been in existence over two hundred years ; but this the lodge under oon-W