ODDFELLOWS, ORDER OF, a secret benevolent and social society and subsequently a friendly benefit society also, having mystic signs of recognition, initiatory rites and ceremonies, and various grades of dignity and honour. Great antiquity has been claimed for the order of Oddfellows, but the members them selves now generally admit that the institution cannot be traced back beyond the first half of the 18th century, and explain the name as adopted at a time when the severance into sects and classes was so wide that persons aiming at social union and mutual help were a marked exception to the general rule. Mention is made by Defoe of the society of Oddfellows, but the oldest lodge of which the name has been handed down is the Loyal Aristarcus, No. 9, which met in 1745 "at the Oakley Arms, Borough of Southwark ; Globe Tavern, Hatton Garden; or the Boar's Head in Smithfield, as the noble master may direct." The earliest lodges were sup ported by each member and visitor paying a penny to the secre tary on entering the lodge, and special sums were voted to any brother in need. If out of work he was supplied with a card and funds to reach the next lodge, and he went from lodge to lodge until he found employment. The lodges gradually adopted a defi nite common ritual and became confederated under the name of the Patriotic Order. Towards the end of the century many of the lodges were broken up by State prosecutions on the suspicion that 'The late Roman chronicler Trebellius Pollio goes further and asserts "Odenatus rex Palmyrenorum optinuit totius Orientis imperium. . . . Gallienus Odenatum participato imperio Augustum vocavit," Hist. Aug. xxiii. 10 and 12. This is not borne out by the evidence. The highest rank claimed for him by his own people is recorded in an inscription dated 271 (N.S.I. No. 13o) set up by the two generals of the Palmyrene army ; Odainath is styled "king of kings and restorer of the whole city"; but this does not mean that he ever held the title of Augustus, and the inscription was set up after his death and during the revolt of Palmyra.
their purposes were "seditious," but the society continued to exist as the Union Order of Oddfellows until 1809. In 1813, at a con vention in Manchester, was formed the Independent Order of Oddfellows, Manchester Unity, which now overshadows all the minor societies in England. Oddfellowship was introduced into the
United States from the Manchester Unity in 1819, and the grand lodge of Maryland and the United States was constituted on Feb. 22, 1821. It now rivals in membership and influence the Manches ter Unity, from which it severed its connection in 1842. In 1843 it issued a dispensation for opening the Prince of Wales Lodge No. I, at Montreal, Canada. The American society, including Canada and the United States, has its headquarters at Baltimore. Organ izations connected either with the United States or England have been founded in France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the British dominions and elsewhere.
The most complete and trustworthy account of the institution is that in The Complete Manual of Oddfellowship, its History, Prin ciples, Ceremonies and Symbolism, privately printed (1879). (See also FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.) ODE, a form of stately and elaborate lyrical verse. The origi nal signification of an ode was a chant, a poem arranged to be sung to an instrumental accompaniment. There were two great divisions of the Greek melos or song. One of them, in the hands of Alcaeus, Anacreon and Sappho, came close to what modern criticism knows as lyric. On the other hand, the choir-song, in which the poet spoke for himself, but always supported, or inter preted, by a chorus, led up to what is known as ode proper. It was Alcman who first gave to his poems a strophic arrangement, and the strophe (q.v,) has come to be essential to an ode. Stesi chorus, Ibycus and Simonides of Ceos led the way to the two great masters of ode among the ancients, Pindar and Bacchylides. The form and verse-arrangement of Pindar's great lyrics have regulated the type of the heroic ode. It is now perceived that they are consciously composed in very elaborate measures. So far from being, as critics long supposed, utterly irregular, they are more like the canzos and sirventes of the mediaeval trouba dours than any modern verse. The Latins lost the secret of these complicated harmonies, and made no serious attempt to imitate the odes of Pindar. The ode, as it was practised by the Romans, returned to the lyrical form of Sappho and Alcaeus. This was exemplified, in the most exquisite way, by Horace and Catullus.