‘It depends on how you’re able to receive it,’ said a Black lecturer. ‘You only go a wee bit at a time. There’s a lesson in every degree and the greatest lesson that I can find from any of them is where the children of Israel on the other side of Jordan built the altar and then the bigger part of their brethren saw it and thought they were worshipping false gods. And they condemned their brethren.
‘And then they found out the truth – that they had built it to God and that their brethren were true Israelites, but that they had condemned them without one particle of evidence being produced. The lesson I learned I teach candidates is if you made up your mind, saying you’ve had a mouthful of this boy and you were just going to give him a hiding the night, just stop and think and don’t make a hasty judgment on him. Wait. And tomorrow when you waken you’ll have a different picture. I explain that to them.’
‘The acting out of Bible stories and the signs and emblems and all that are rather like mystery plays,’ points out an historically-minded Blackman. ‘They helped illiterate people like many of our early members to remember scriptural truths. When properly performed by a good lecturer, these stories and truths can leave an imprint. And the tradition remains a good one. Many of our people are not book-minded, but they like and can relate to imagery.’
The role of the lecturer is crucial. They are part of an oral tradition: they explain the stories, teach degree candidates their responses and play a crucial part in the ceremonies. It is because they believe that the degree system helps people lead a better life, that so many of them give up an enormous amount of their time to pass on the oral tradition to their brethren.
Read with imagination (and with the information on Arch Purple and Black emblems given in the next chapter), ‘The Black Man’s Dream’, a song written around 1795, gives a good indication of what is involved in the ‘travel’.
One night I thought a vision brought
Me to a spacious plain,
Whereon its centre stood a mount,
Whose top I wished to gain;
Orange, blue, and purple, too,
Were given me to wear,
And for to see the mystery
They did me thus prepare.
My guide a pack placed on my back –
With pillars of an arch –
A staff and scrip placed in my hand,
And thus I on did march;
Through desert lands I travelled o’er,
And the narrow road I trod,
Till something did obstruct my path
In the form of a toad.
So then I saw what did me awe,
Though wandering in a dream
A flaming bush, though unconsumed,
Before me did remain;
And as I stood out of the wood
I heard a heavenly sound,
Which made me cast my shoes away,
For it was holy ground.
Two men I saw, with weapons keen,
Which did me sore annoy –
Unto a pyramid I ran
That standing was hard by;
And as I climbed the narrow way,
A hand I there did see,
Which layed the lofty mountains In the scale of equity. Blue, gold, and black about my neck,
This apparition placed –
Into a chariot I was put,
Where we drove off in haste:
Twelve dazzling lights of beauty bright
Were brought to guide my way,
And as we drove thro’ cypress shades
One of them did decay.
Near to a mount I saw a fount
Of living water flow;
I being dry, they did reply,
To drink you there may go;
The mystic cup I then took up,
And drank a health to all
That were born free and kept their knee
From bowing unto Baal.
‘I think we have to deal with the image of secrecy,’ says William Bingham. ‘Too many people see the Black as being almost masonic, which it isn’t. As a group of people who have hidden agendas and secret meetings and people fishing for jobs for the boys. So I think the institution has to become more open. It has to be prepared to come forward and say, you know, this is what our degrees are about without going into great detail. We should explain to people the meanings of the degrees.
‘We’ve tried to do this in Markethill District where about four years ago we started public meetings once a month during the months of November through to March where the scriptures related to each of the degrees were read and explained. And when we’d gone through the degrees we brought in the banners – one banner a night from each preceptory – and looked at the picture – usually a picture relating to one of the degrees – and explained to people the significance of the emblems and the signs. Things which if they are good and proper and shed light on life from scripture, are not to be kept in the dark but to be brought in the open.’
The Apprentice Boys
The Apprentice Boys, though Protestant, are essentially secular and their club meetings therefore are primarily social. ‘I’m not a member of the Orange,’ said one. ‘But we get called “Orange bastards” anyway.
‘I joined for traditional reasons. My father was in it and my son’s in it. It is a city-based organization with the headquarters here in Londonderry. People join to keep up tradition. Most Protestants in Londonderry are now Apprentice Boys, though the business and professional people have mostly opted out over the last thirty or forty years. It’s now mainly working class. People with a shop wouldn’t want to be seen as one tradition only and perhaps lose custom from the majority of the citizens who are about 70 per cent nationalists.
‘The ABs believe that the siege was one of the most historic events in the British Isles and all citizens should be proud of it. We see ourselves as keepers of the true tradition of that siege, because no one else has bothered down through the years. And in that remembrance, what basically we’re doing is remembering the triumph of spirit and the supreme sacrifice made by up to 10,000 of those defenders. The tercentenary of that event in 1989 was really basically only celebrated here although it should have been celebrated all over the British Isles.’
There are no masonic overtones among the Apprentice Boys, no secret