Joe Fahy: Masonry

Published material related to the collection: 
Moore, Michael (2016) ‘A Tale of Two Masons’, The Archive Journal, Vol 20: 8-10. 

The following is a short extract from the interview transcript, copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material for this interview or other interviews please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com


JF You’d see people saying, he’s stone mad that fella, but how that name came was, that came from the old masons, the old stonemasons because they’d be working on a stone wall right, and then they’d, when you do stone work, you’d have to stand back from it and look at it and you’d see, oh I have to cover that there, that’s not running right there that joint is going to high or you know that stone now, I don’t think that stone is good enough there, and you’d have to stand back from your work and then he said, you could be dressing a stone, and you could be dressing it for five minutes, now they dressed all the stone by hand, the stone today is all guillotined [Cut square by a machine] there’s no art in it today as such, like there’s still art in it because anytime I handle a guillotine stone now, I still put the chisel to it, even though it’s square enough and the face is good enough, I still put the chisel to it, just to give it the chisel marks, to let people know that you’re after going at it, that you’re not just after putting it in like cladding on a wall, you know, and that’s what I do with it, but as I say

MM Put your touch on it

JF Yeah, I always put a touch on it, I’ll always touch it, and I’ll tell the young fellas I’m showing, you touch that, always touch it, just don’t stick it in, anybody can stick it in like that, you touch it and do a nice job on it and take pride in what you do