Royal Order of Eri

Legend and origins

“Eri” and “Erin” are old poetic names for Ireland, and the Order’s traditional history is built on the belief that early Ireland had a learning and literature to rival any ancient nation. According to that tradition, a knightly order made up entirely of Freemasons was set up in the remote past by an Irish king. Albert Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry gives the legendary founding as 1695 BC and names the founder as Eremon, King of Ulster. It adds that the order is said to have ended its military role somewhere between 1649 and 1659 AD. The Victorian Masonic directory Beyond the Craft, on which the earlier version of this page drew, gives the date as 1697 BC and names Brian Boru as the founder. Brian Boru, however, was a real High King of Ireland who lived from about 941 to 1014 AD, so that version cannot be right as it stands. Either way, these dates belong to legend, not to documented history.

The legend leans on the Annals of the Four Masters, a great chronicle of Irish history compiled between 1632 and 1636 by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh and his collaborators. Masonic writers say it mentions the Knights of the Collar of Eri, founded by King Eamhuin and eight princes who commanded the armies of the four provinces of Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connaught. Mackey’s account places their headquarters at Armagh, where a royal palace stood until it burned in 332 AD. After that the court moved to Tara in County Meath. Tara is said to have had a great hall for the knights, a military hospital called the House of the Sorrowful Soldier, and a celebrated college of Celtic learning.

In this story the ancient order was a company of the learned as much as of warriors. Its ranks included the Ollamhs, teachers who also cared for the sick and for travellers; the Brehons, judges who saw that the law was properly kept; the Crimthears, priests (Mackey calls them priest-astronomers) who looked after the people’s religious and moral teaching; and the Bards, who kept the memory of great deeds alive in verse. Heralds were added later and helped to advance the arts and sciences. The “Red Branch” of the American title recalls the Red Branch of the Ulster Cycle, the royal hall of King Conchobar mac Nessa at Emain Macha, whose warriors became known as the Red Branch Knights.

The modern Masonic order is much younger. Writing in 1994, K. B. Jackson recorded that John Yarker (1833–1913), the Manchester Freemason and tireless collector of rites, was at one time head of the “English Revived Order of the Red Branch of Eri”. The constitution of the Allied Masonic Degrees of the United States states that its American ritual is the nineteenth-century English working, copied from the John Yarker manuscript.

Organisation and structure

A local body of the Order is called a Faslairt, an Irish word Mackey glosses as a “camp”, and its general assembly is known as the Foleith. Each Faslairt is led by an Enlightened Knight Commander. It usually meets only twice a year and normally receives a single candidate at each meeting.

At the head of the English Order is the Most Enlightened Grand Master. He is supported by eight Knights Grand Cross of Eri and by a number of Ard (Grand) Officers, who together form the MurOllamham, the Order’s equivalent of a Grand Lodge. According to Beyond the Craft, three Faslairts work under the English Order: two in England (one in the Midlands and one in London) and one in Melbourne, Australia. The Melbourne body is the Faslairt of Malichi No. 3, which meets at Coppin Hall in February and holds its installation in August.

Membership and grades

Nobody applies to join. Under the English Order a candidate must be invited, and must already hold at least the Fifth Grade of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. The Melbourne Faslairt asks more, inviting only members of the Seventh Grade or above who are also Past Celebrants (past heads of an SRIA College).

The Order has three grades: Man-at-Arms, Esquire and Knight. All three are conferred on the candidate at the meeting where he is received. Much of the ceremonial is written in bardic verse and draws heavily on old Irish lore.

In North America the Order works differently. The Allied Masonic Degrees of the United States record that John Raymond Shute II and William Moseley Brown obtained permission from the English authorities in 1933 to establish the Royal Order there. It now forms a chamber of the Grand Council, and its ranks serve as honours for service to the Allied Masonic Degrees. A Council may make a member a Man-at-Arms for exceptional service, and two office-holders each year may be recommended as Esquires. Since 12 February 2005 a Council may recommend one brother a year to be made a Knight, and he must have been a member of the Allied Masonic Degrees for at least seven years. Past Sovereign Masters become Knights Commander, present and past Grand Officers become Knights Grand Cross, and Sovereign Grand Masters become Knights Supreme Grand Cross. In Canada the Order also sits within the Allied Masonic Degrees and is conferred at the Annual Assembly or by a District Deputy Grand Master.

Regalia

The jewel of the Order is a gilt metal Celtic cross, worn on the left breast. Members also wear a sash of four coloured bands around the waist. The Enlightened Knight Commander of a Faslairt is set apart by a green cloak and a sash of five colours, and he wears the jewel of the Order from a collarette around his neck. The illustrations below show the regalia of the different ranks.

The Order today

Because a candidate must first rise through the grades of the Rosicrucian Society, and each Faslairt admits so few members, the English Order of Eri remains tiny and very senior. Its American and Canadian counterparts reach more members, but as a mark of long service, not as a degree to be sought. In every jurisdiction it is valued less for its size than for the colour of its Irish legend and its unusual verse ceremonies.

For more information or if you would like to join, please visit the following URLs:
– https://www.amdusa.org/degrees/RBE.html
– https://issuu.com/mediaflash/docs/quovadis/s/10930613
– http://www.alliedmasonicdegrees.org/regalia.htm
– https://austinwholdencouncil.weebly.com/honors.html

Membership is by invitation only; a senior member of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, or of a Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees in North America, is the right person to ask about it.