Wowee this was a long thread. I came across it looking for something else (a luke kelly song) and I could not find any reference to the query in the original message "What does he mean by 'secret sign' that is known to artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone ?".

I always assumed he was referring to the Goban Saor. I was told by an uncle, who used to work in London in the 70s with masons from Northern Ireland (real stone masons that is)that the old masons used to have their own secret language that was passed along from mason to mason and they called it the goban saor. This might be rubbish but has anyone else heard of it. Incidentally, the Goban Saor is also a name give to the place in the Littleton bog in County Tipperary where the Derrynaflan Hoard was found.