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

Banshee

Supernatural
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 wailing spirit in Irish tradition whose cry foretells a death. It is often associated with mourning and ancestral warning.

Detailed Definition
The banshee is a female spirit from Irish folklore, recognized by her piercing keening before a death in a family. In poetry, her cry can function as an omen that arrives before language can explain it. Writers may invoke the banshee to connect private grief with inherited history, especially through images of wind, hair, night roads, and voices heard beyond the house. Her lament gives supernatural form to anticipatory sorrow.
Example
Example in poetry:
A banshee’s cry can serve as an omen in a poem: “Beyond the bog, the banshee keened before the telegram arrived.”; In Irish folklore-inspired verse, the banshee may mourn a family line rather than attack it, giving her a tragic and ceremonial role.; A poet can compare a wind siren to a banshee to transform an ordinary sound into a warning: “The factory whistle rose like a banshee over town.”; The banshee can embody inherited sorrow when her wail echoes the speaker’s fear of repeating ancestral losses.
Additional Notes
The banshee’s cry is often more important than her appearance. Its sound can create ominous atmosphere, connect a family to ancestry, or foreshadow loss without stating it directly.
Other Meanings of “Banshee”
Also Known As
Bean Sí Bean Sidhe Banshie
Skip to main content