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Kilwinning Town
KILWINNING, the capital of the cognominal
parish,
and a populous manufacturing village, is pleasantly
situated on a gentle rising ground on the right bank
of the river Garnock; 2½ miles from the nearest part
of the frith of Clyde; 3½ miles north-east of
Salt-coats; 2¾ miles north-west of Irvine; and 3¾
miles south of Dairy. The town is ancient, and
has a dull, antiquated, dingy appearance; yet
borrows sufficient splendour from the loveliness of
its environs, and from reminiscences of its
historical importance, mid from the beautiful and
partially Gothic form of its parish-church, with an
elegant modern spire surmounting the tower of its
ancient monastery, to be an object of no little
interest. It consists principally of one street,
winged by some lanes, and of some rows of modern
houses; and stretches westward from the river.
The approaches to it are shaded with trees, and
flanked by beautiful fields. At its east end is a
height, called the Crossbill, on which the monks
anciently set up what they reckoned the symbol of
Christianity, to receive the initiatory homage
of the pilgrims who crowded to their
shrines. Part of the town is suburban,
consisting of an attached or adjacent village
called Byres. The ancient seat of monkish
indolence and gilded knavery is now the scene of
manufacturing industry; and acquires from the humble
toils of its busy inhabitants, and especially from
the moral enlightenment of a portion of their
number, unutterably higher attractions than it ever
possessed in the pompous fooleries and rueful
grandeur of the cowled fraternity who drew flocks of
victims to their sumptuous ecclesiastical palace.
The rattle of the loom, and the humble prattle of
Christian intelligence, as substitutes for the
choral chauntings of the missal, amply compensate by
their intrinsic utility all that they lose in
poetical effect. In the various departments of
silk, woollen, and cotton, the town had, in 1828,
370 looms, and in 1838, 350. In the latter year,
60 of the looms were harness, and 290 plain. Near
the end of last century, an extensive tannery, and
3 small factories, 1 for carding cotton, and 2
for spinning it, were established. 'With the
exception of a few families, the whole population,
not only of the town, but of the landward part of
the parish, are of the working-classes, principally
hand-loom weavers, shopkeepers, labourers, and
colliers. The town has a branch-office of the
Commercial Bank of Scotland ; and it has two
annual fairs. Nor is the place deficient,
proportionately to its bulk, in charitable or
friendly institutions.
A remarkable fact connected with the town—one which
occasions its name to figure prominently to the
present day in the proceedings of the gaudy and
flaunting associations, so extensively popular in
our country, who endeavour to make up by parade and
by boasted consciousness of importance, what they
want in usefulness and meaning—is, that it was the
cradle of free-masonry in Scotland, and, till not
very many years ago, was regarded with filial
feelings, or with those of nurslings, by all the
lodges in the kingdom. The community and
conservation of a real or supposed secret—especially
considering how unreserved and open benevolence, or
true goodness, is in its abstract nature—seems the
most questionable of all bonds of union, short of
such as are positively criminal, for forming and
maintaining voluntary associations; yet it appears,
with a numerous proportion of men, to have in most
ages possessed peculiar attractions, and to have, in
some instances, been preferred to other bonds of
union, at the risk even of proscription and
suffering. The Eleusinian
mysteries attained great respectability among the
ancient Greeks, and were protected by law. A class
of artificers, held together by the Dionysian
mysteries, too, possessed at one time the exclusive
privilege of erecting temples and theatres, and were
numerous in Syria, Persia, and Western Hindostan.
These ancient associations, on account of their
ceremonies all having connexion with pagan
superstitions,
were proscribed by the Christian Roman emperors;
yet they are believed to have been secretly
continued,
under the pretence of ordinary assemblies for
amusement, and with a diminished amplitude in the
observance of pagan rites. Modern masonry—to the
uninitiated, at least, and almost certainly to even
the initiated is so obscure in its early history
and character,
that it neither, on the one hand, can it be
distinctly traced to either a connexion with these
or other ancient fraternities, or to some
comparatively modern outburst of the common tendency
of mankind to associate themselves in clubs and
select communities ; nor, on the other hand, can it
be pronounced to have had for its original object
what seems mainly to be its modern one —a pompous
and ceremonial species of conviviality, or the
maintenance of freer notions, bona fide on the
subject of architecture, than the circumstances of
an iron age permitted to be public. All that can
fully be affirmed is, that, about the time of the
crusades, associations of free-masons, whose members
had a formal initiation, and distinguished one
another by secret signs, appeared numerously in
Europe, and acted a conspicuous part, if not in the
introduction of the Saracenic, or, as it is usualiy
called, the Gothic architecture, at least in the
superintendence of most of the magnificent erections
in which it was exemplified. Sir Christopher Wren,
as quoted by Grose —taking quite as high a flight in
positiveness of statement as could be at all safe—
says, "The Holy war gave the Christians who had
been" in the east "an idea of the Saracen works,
which were afterwards by them imitated in the west;
and they refined upon it every day, as they
proceeded in building churches. The Italians (among
which were still some Greek refugees), and with them
French, Germans, and Flemings, joined into a
fraternity of architects ; procuring papal bulls for
their encouragement, and particular privileges. They
styled themselves free-masons, and ranged from one
nation to another, as they found churches to be
built (for very many in those ages were every where
in building through piety or emulation). Their
government was regular ; and where they fixed near
the building in hand, they made a camp of huts. A
surveyor governed in chief; every tenth man was
called a warden, and overlooked each nine ; the
gentlemen in the neighbourhood, either out of
charity or commutation of penance, gave the
materials and carriages." [Antiquities. Vol. i.
Pref. Note in p. 114] One of these fraternities
either voluntarily came, or were invited over from
the continent, to take part in building the abbey of
Kilwinning; and when on the spot, they seem to have
communicated their secret, whatever it was, to some
of the more respectable natives who had no practical
connexion with the art of masonry, and thus to have
formed the earliest lodge of Scottish free-masons.
But the fraternities on the continent, by holding
their meetings with shut doors, by binding
themselves under the sanction of an oath to keep all
the uninitiated, no matter how princely or
prelatical, unacquainted with their mysteries, and
especially by fraternizing with the usurping and
dangerous military order of Knights Templars,
speedily drew upon "themselves such jealousies,
anathematizings, proscriptions, and persecutions, as
issued in their extinction. The parent national
lodges of Kilwinning in Scotland, and York in
England, with whatever offshoots they had
throughout the country, doubtless shared in
the general odium; and though they survived the
shock, they continued for ages in obscurity.
During the reign of James I., however, Scottish
free-masonry walked abroad with the high bearing
which has ever since characterized it. That
monarch, not long after his return from England,
patronized the mother-lodge of Kilwinning; and
presided as grand-master till he settled an annual
salary, to be paid by every master-mason of Scotland
to a grand-master, who should be chosen by the
brethren, and approved by the Crown, —who should be
nobly born, or a clergyman of high rank and
character, —and who should have his deputies in the
different towns and counties of Scotland. James
II. conferred the office of grand-master on William
St. Clair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness, and made
it hereditary in the family of his descendants, the
Barons of Roslin. Earl William and his successors
held their head-courts, or assembled their
grand-lodges, in Kilwinning, as the seat of the
earliest fraternity. An uncommon spirit for
freemasonry becoming diffused, many lodges were
formed throughout the kingdom, receiving their
charters of erection from the Kilwinning lodge, and
combining its name with their own in their
distinctive titles. In 1736, William St. Clair of
Roslin, obliged to sell his estates, and destitute
of an heir, resigned to an assembly of the lodges of
Edinburgh and its vicinity, all claim to the
grand-mastership, and empowered them, in common with
the other lodges of the country, to declare the
office elective. On St. Andrews' day of that year,
the representatives of about 32 lodges received the
resignation, elected William St. Clair himself their
grand-master, set an example which has ever since
been followed, of testifying respect for the part
he acted, and constituted themselves into the
grand-lodge of Scotland, —an institution whose
influence or power has in a great measure shorn the
ancient Kilwinning lodge of its peculiar honours, or
at least superseded it in its paramount place among
the lodges. Yet, whoever takes any interest in
free-masonry, still looks with feelings of pride or
veneration to the Kilwinning lodge, and no doubt
gives a ready response to the remark of the author
of the Beauties of Scotland, "that the humble
village of Kilwinning, considered as the spot where
this order was preserved while it was extinguished
on the continent of Europe, and from which it was to
rise from its ashes, and spread to the rising and
the setting sun, enjoys a singular degree of
importance, which it could scarcely have obtained
from any other circumstance." " The records of
the Kilwinning lodge," says the Old Statistical
Account, " contain a succession of grand-masters,
charters of erection to other lodges, as daughters
of the mother-lodge, &c. The Earls of Eglintoune
have successively patronized this lodge. Some
years ago, the present earl made a donation to the
fraternity of a piece of ground, for building a new
and very elegant lodge; and, with many other
gentlemen, anxious to preserve the rights of the
very ancient and venerable mother-lodge, liberally
contributed to its erection. There is a common seal,
expressive of the antiquity of the mother-lodge, and
of the emblems of the ancient art of masonry, and by
which charters, and all other public deeds of the
society, are ratified."
Archery is practised to the present hour at Kilwinning, as an elegant and manly amusement.
Though the town, in this particular, exhibits only a
taste which is possessed in common with it by
Edinburgh, Musselburgh, Kelso, Peebles, St. Andrews,
Irvine, and other places, yet it outvies them all in
the antiquity of its company of archers, and in the
principle of utility, or of compliance with regal
acts for regulating the military system of the
state, on which they
were originally associated. The company are known,
though imperfectly, and only by tradition, to have
existed prior to the year 1488; and from that year
downward, they are authenticated by documents.
Originally enrolled by royal authority, they appear
to have been encouraged by the inmates of the abbey;
and they, in consequence, instituted customs which
easily secured their surviving the discontinuance or
of archery as the principal art of war. Once a-year,
generally in the month of June, they make a grand
exhibition. The principal shooting is at a parrot,
anciently called the papingo, and well known under
that name in heraldry, but now called the popinjay.
This used to be constructed of wood ; but in recent
years has consisted of feathers worked up into the
semblance of a parrot; and is suspended by a string
to the top of a pole, and placed 120 feet high, on
the steeple of the monastery. The archer who
shoots down this mark is called "the Captain of the
popinjay;" he is master of the ceremonies of the
succeeding year; he sends cards of invitation to the
ladies, and gives them a ball and supper; and he
transmits the honours to posterity by attaching to
the badge of them, which was temporarily in his
possession, a medal with suitable devices. The badge
received and transmitted is now, and since 1723 has
been, a silver arrow; but from 148S to 1688, it was
a piece of vari-coloured taffeta called a 'benn,'
and
worn as a sash; and from the latter date till 1723,
it was a piece of silver-plate. Every person
acquainted with the national novels of Scotland,
will
recognize the Kilwinning festival, though tictioned
to be on a different arena, in the opening scene of
Old Mortality, when young Milnwood achieves the
honours of captain of the popinjay, and becomes
bound to do the honours of the Howff. Another
kind of shooting is practised for prizes at butts,
point-blank distance, about 26 yards. The prize, in
this case, is some useful or ornamental piece of
plate,
given annually to the company by the senior
surviving archer. -The town is governed by a
baron-bailie.
Population between 2,000 and 3,000.
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