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

Blether

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

To talk at length and idly; nonsensical chatter or a person who chatters thus.

Detailed Definition
"Blether" captures the Scottish ambivalence toward excessive talk — at once affectionate and mildly reproving. Used as both verb and noun, it describes idle gossip, rambling speech, or the person who produces it. In poetry it adds comic texture and social observation, gently mocking pretension or foolishness. Its sound — soft yet percussive — mirrors the quality it describes. Burns and later makars use it to deflate pomposity with characteristic Scots wit.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Blether" means to talk foolishly or at great length; Burns writes of "bletherin, blustering, drunken blellum" in "Address to the Unco Guid"; A poet might write: "He blethered on by the peat-fire's light, / spinning his stories through the night." to capture garrulous storytelling; "Stop your blether, the stars are oot — / let silence speak without a doubt." uses the word to demand reverence for nature; "She blethered on aboot this and that, / the kail, the kirk, the neighbour's cat." sketches a community character; "The politician's blether filled the hall / but said, in truth, nothing at all." applies the term satirically; "His blether masked a lonely soul / that words could never quite make whole." adds pathos beneath the noise
Additional Notes
Blether is both verb and noun, and its range makes it enormously useful in characterisation. A "blether" as a person is someone who talks endlessly and emptily — a social type recognised across centuries of Scottish life. To "blether" is to engage in that talk oneself. The word has a slightly affectionate quality despite its critical meaning; calling someone a blether is not quite the same as calling them a liar. In poetry it often serves comic purposes, deflating pretension or capturing the rhythms of community conversation. Related terms include "clishmaclaver" (idle gossip) and "gaberlunzie" (wandering beggar/chatterer). Students should note how Burns uses speech and talk as poetic subjects in their own right.
Also Known As
Claver Chatter Prattle
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