A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter A

Aillen

Mythology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A fire-breathing fairy or Otherworld being who terrorized Tara annually

Detailed Definition
Aillen the Burner lulled the court of Tara to sleep with enchanted music before setting it ablaze each Samhain. Fionn mac Cumhaill slew him using the Salmon of Knowledge’s wisdom. Aillen symbolizes cyclical destruction and the threat of chaos; poets use him to represent seasonal death, the power of music, and the hero’s triumph over entropy.
Example
Example in poetry:
Aillen is a fire-breathing Otherworld being who terrorizes Tara each Samhain; In the tale of Fionn mac Cumhaill, young Fionn defeats Aillen with a magical spear; Aillen’s music induces sleep before he burns the royal seat, blending art and destruction; He represents cyclical chaos that must be overcome by heroic vigilance; Poets reference Aillen to symbolize seasonal danger and the triumph of awareness; His story is a classic initiation myth in Fenian poetry.
Additional Notes
Aillen (or Aillen mac Midgna) is a fire-breathing Otherworld being who annually puts Tara’s defenders to sleep with enchanted music before burning the royal seat. His defeat by the young Fionn mac Cumhaill (using the magical spear from his father’s grave) marks Fionn’s heroic debut. Aillen represents cyclical chaos and the necessity of vigilance—key themes in initiation myths. For poets, his story offers rich motifs: music as weapon, fire as destruction/renewal, and sleep as vulnerability. His annual return on Samhain links him to seasonal rituals and the thinning of the Otherworld veil.
Also Known As
Aillen mac Midgna The Fire-Breather of Samhain The Harpist of Terror The Destroyer of Tara
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