Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

for many of the same reasons that the Masonic lodges were so popular in
Scotland: it was convivial, secretive, ritualistic, and democratic.” 83
Certainly, notorious carouser John Boswell enjoyed his evenings at the
No. 2 Canongate Kilwinning Lodge. And Robert Burns, member of Canongate
Kilwinning, joined the convivial Tarbolton Bachelor’s Club and the Crochallan
Fencibles, for a “large part of the esprit de corps of the Crochallans was spirits,
and Burns had a dangerous thirst.” 84 Other prominent Scottish freemasons who
joined the Fencibles were Sir William Dunbar, William Smellie, Henry Erskine,
Alexander Gordon, and Alexander Wight. 85 And included among the members
of two popular drinking societies – the Cape Club and the Poker Club – were
James Aitken of No. 2 Canongate Kilwinning, 86 Thomas Erskine, 6 th Earl of
Kellie of St Giles’ lodge, Dugald Stewart, and Reverend William Roberston.
One interesting convivial society, ostensibly a “club composed of
lawyers and literary men, whose bond of union was their friendship for Henry
Dundas…who met at Perves’s tavern in Parliament Square,” 87 was the Feast of
Tabernacles. Lawyer and antiquary Andrew Crosbie, a member of St Luke’s,
and founder and First Fellow of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, was a
member; Henry Dundas was also a member, although his association with the
83
McElroy, Age of Improvement, 147.
84
Ibid, 150. The Fencibles were based on the practice of citizens banding together against
“dangers arising from invasion during the American War.” However, it was a drinking society;
the name Crochallan “came from an old Gaelic song, ‘Cro chalien, or Colin’s cattle,’ sung by
Dawney Douglas, landlord of the taern where the club met.” The Bachelor’s Club – organized
by Burns in 1780 – apparently used as a model a debating club in Ayr.”
85
See Appendix 2.
86
Ibid, 145. Aitken, who suggested the members adopt “fanciful knighthoods,” assumed the
title ‘Sir Poker.’
87
John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Scotland and Scotsmen of the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh,
1888), 448.
105