Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

124 BURDENS
BURNS
Burdens, Bearers of . A class of workmen
at the Temple mentioned in 2 Chron . ii .
18, and referred to by Dr. Anderson (Const .,
1738, p . 11) as the Ish Sabbal, which see .
Burt or Bure. The first god of Norse
mythology. In accordance with the quaint
cosmogony of the ancient religion of Germany
or that of Scandinavia, it was believed that
before the world came into existence there was
a great void, on the north side of which was a
cold and dark region, and on the south side
one warm and luminous. In Niflheim was a
well, or the "seething caldron," out of which
flowed twelve streams into the great void and
formed a huge giant . In Iceland the first
great giant was called Ymir, by the Germans
Tuisto (Tacitus, Germania, ch . 2), whose
three grandchildren were regarded as the
founders of three of the German races .
Cotemporary with Ymir, and from the
great frost-blocks of primeval chaos, was produced
a man called Buri, who was wise,
strong, and beautiful . His son married the
daughter of another giant, and their issue were
the three sons Odin, Wili, and We, who ruled
as gods in heaven and earth .
By some it is earnestly believed that upon
these myths and legends many symbols of
Masonry were founded .
Burial . The right to be buried with the
ceremonies of the Order is one that, under certain
restrictions, belongs to every Master Mason
.
None of the ancient Constitutions contain
any law upon this subject, nor can the exact
time be now determined when funeral processions
and a burial service were first admitted
as regulations of the Order .
The first official notice, however, that we
have of funeral processions is in November,
1754. A regulation was then adopted which
prohibited any Mason from attending a funeral
or other procession clothed in any of the
jewels or clothing of the Craft, except by dispensation
of the Grand Master or his deputy .
(Constitutions, 1756, p . 303.)
There are no further regulations on this subject
in any of the editions of the Book of Constitutions
previous to the modern code which
is now in force in the Grand Lodge of England.
But Preston gives us the rules on this
subject, which have now been adopted by
general consent as the law of the Order, in the
following words :
"No Mason can be interred with the formalities
of the Order unless it be by his own
special request communicated to the Master
of the Lodge of which he died a member, foreigners
and sojourners excepted ; nor unless he
has been advanced to the third degree of Masonry,
from which restriction there can be no
exception . Fellow Crafts or Apprentices are
not entitled to the funeral obsequies ." (Illustrations,
1792, p . 118 .)
The only restrictions prescribed by Preston
are, it will be perceived, that the deceased
must have been a Master Mason, that he had
himself made the request, and that he was affiliated,
which is implied by the expression
that he must have made the request for burial
of the Master of the Lodge of which he was a
member .
The regulation of 1754, which requires a
dispensation from the Grand Master for a
funeral procession, is not considered of force
in the United States of America, where, accordingly,
Masons have generally been permitted
to bury their dead without the necessity
of such dispensation .
Burning Bush . In the third chapter of
Exodus it is recorded that, while Moses was
keeping the flock of Jethro on Mount Horeb,
"the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a
flame of fire out of the midst of a bush," and
there communicated to him for the first time
his Ineffable Name . This occurrence is commemorated
in the "Burning Bush" of the
Royal Arch Degree . In all the systems of antiquity,
fire is adopted as a symbol of Deity ;
and the "Burning Bush," or the bush filled
with fire which did not consume, whence came
forth the Tetragrammaton, the symbol of Divine
Light and Truth, is considered, in the
higher degrees of Masonry, like the "Orient"
in the lower, as the great source of true Masonic
light ; wherefore Supreme Councils of
the Thirty-third Degree date their balustres,
or official documents, "near the B . B .' .," or
"Burning Bush," to intimate that they are, in
their own rite, the exclusive source of all
Masonic instruction .
Burnes, Sir James . A distinguished
Mason, and formerly Provincial Grand Master
of Western India under the Grand Lodge
of Scotland (1836-46) . In 1846 he was appointed
Grand Master of Scottish Freemasons
in India . He returned home in 1849,
and died in 1862, after serving for thirty years
in the Indian Medical Service . He was the
author of an interesting work entitled a
Sketch of the History of the Knights Templars
. By James Burnes, LL.D ., F .R .S .,
Knight of the Royal Hanoverian G'uelphie
Order ; published at London, in 1840, in 74
60 pages in small quarto .
Burns, Robert . The celebrated Scottish
poet, of whose poetry William Pitt has said,
"that he could think of none since Shakespeare's
that had so much the appearance of
sweetly coming from nature," was born at
Kirk Alloway, near the town of Ayr, on the
25th of January, 1759, and died on the 22d of
July, 1796 . He was initiated into Freemasonry
in St . David's Lodge, Tarbolton, on July 4,
1781, and was at one time the Master of a Lodge
at Mauchline, where he presided with great
credit to himself, as appears from the following
remarks of the philosophic Dugald Stewart .
"In the course of the same season, I was led
by curiosity to attend for an hour or two a
Masonic Lodge in Mauchline, where Burns
presided . He had occasion to make some
short, unpremeditated compliments to different
individuals from whom he had no reason
to expect a visit, and everything he said was
happily conceived and forcibly as well as fluently
expressed." The slanderous charge that
he acquired the habits of dissipation, to which