A Cork man is one of the few people left in the country who is an expert on the secret stonemason language.

Jim Fahy from Minane Bridge is a mason with Cork City Council and has been involved with a historical building in the city called Carpenters Hall for many years.

Jim has worked as a mason since 1975 and before that helped his father, who was also a mason.

The family go back generations in the stonemason trade and have always been proud of their association with the trade and its language.

He has been involved in promoting the heritage and traditions of the masonary trade for many years which has given him an insight in to the older masons and their lives.

On Saturday, during Cork Heritage Open Day, Jim will give a talk on the secret mason language in Carpenters Hall.

He told the Cork Independent: “In the 1800s, a few men wrote down a couple of words, they had bits and pieces wrote down. Then there was an architect, a Fitzgerald from Youghal, he wrote wrote down a fair chunk of stuff down on it. And then there was a scholar involved in the Gaelic League that wrote even more down.

“The stronghold was really in Munster but mostly in Cork. And there’s a record of it in Germany in the 1940s and in America during the Famine years.”

Jim explained that the secret mason language had links to the Irish language. For example, ‘gaeb lapac’ means a small horse and it is akin to the backward spelling of the Irish word for small horse – capall beag. Then if you put a word into a different sentence, it meant something else. Like ‘gaeb’ means small or little but it also means bad. A ‘buigh’ means a woman and a ‘gaeb buigh’ means a small woman or a daughter.

Jim is passionate about reviving the secret mason language.

He said: “I’m probably one of the last few people who know about it. There’s a couple of masons in their 80s that would have it but basically it is a dying language, it’s almost gone. My thing at the moment is to try and revive it.

“It should be revived, something should be done about it anyway to keep it from dying because as you know yourself, once you forget about then that is the end of it. This can be done by running workshops and you can give people words that they can use in their everyday language.”

On Saturday, Jim will give a talk about it at 12pm in Carpenters Hall. Joe Fahy will also give demonstrations on the day about dressing stone and how to build stone.

They will also have a replica of their old marching banner which was recently put on permanent display in the museum in Fitzgerald’s Park. They will have a sash and apron which were worn by masons on their marches.

A chair belonging to and carved by the carpenters from the 1800s with Irish wolfhounds on the arms and round towners carved into the back will also be on display.