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 B

bansídhe

Dialect
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 variant spelling of bean sídhe, denoting the supernatural wailing woman of Irish tradition whose cry foretells death, a figure of elemental feminine grief that haunts Irish and Anglo-Irish poetry alike.

Detailed Definition
Bansídhe (also banshee) is among the most internationally recognised of Irish supernatural figures, and her persistence in global culture has somewhat obscured the depth of her literary significance in the Irish tradition. She is simultaneously a mourner, a death-omen, a woman of the fairy world, and a figure of terrible, overwhelming grief. In poetry she merges the caoineadh tradition with the sídhe mythology, making her lament a bridge between human and supernatural worlds. Revival poets were drawn to her as an image of Ireland's own wailing grief — a country whose losses have been so great that the supernatural world itself weeps in sympathy.
Example
Example in poetry:
The bansídhe wails outside the window, signaling imminent death in the family; Legends describe the bansídhe combing her long hair beside lonely rivers; The poet hears the bansídhe cry and knows sorrow is approaching; Unlike male spirits, the bansídhe specifically mourns for noble families; The bansídhe appears in misty form, her voice echoing through the valleys; Modern interpretations reimagine the bansídhe as a symbol of feminine grief and power.
Additional Notes
Bansídhe is an alternative spelling of bean sídhe, emphasizing the phonetic pronunciation often heard in oral tradition. In poetic contexts, this spelling may be chosen to reflect dialectal variations or to create specific rhythmic effects. The bansídhe is distinct from general fairy folk because her primary function is mourning; she is attached to specific old families and her wail is a definitive omen of death. Poets use her image to explore themes of fate, ancestral guilt, and the inescapable presence of the past in the present.
Also Known As
banshee bean sí wailing woman
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