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 C

caoíne

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 caoineadh, denoting the Irish practice of ritual keening or lamenting over the dead, performed in verse and associated with communal grief and oral poetic tradition.

Detailed Definition
Caoíne refers to the same fundamental practice as caoineadh — the formal vocal lament for the dead — but the variant spelling reflects dialectal and orthographic differences in Irish. The practice was so central to Irish life that it alarmed English administrators, who repeatedly attempted to suppress it as barbaric and dangerously communal. Poets writing in both Irish and English have returned to the caoíne as a model for elegy that is passionate, bodily, and socially embedded rather than privately meditative. Seamus Heaney's elegies and his translations from the Irish draw explicitly on the emotional directness of the caoíne tradition.
Example
Example in poetry:
The caoíne is the formal lament composed for a deceased chieftain; Professional poets craft the caoíne using established metrical patterns; The caoíne praises the dead leader's generosity and martial prowess; Reciting the caoíne ensures the departed receives proper honor in memory; The caoíne blends historical record with emotional expression; Loss of the caoíne tradition represents a break in Gaelic ceremonial practice.
Additional Notes
Caoíne is a variant of caoineadh, often used in older texts or specific dialects. It refers to the formal lament sung over the dead, characterized by improvised verses praising the deceased and expressing communal loss. In poetry, the caoíne preserves the memory of the dead and ensures their proper transition to the otherworld. It is a highly structured oral genre that requires skill in improvisation and knowledge of genealogical and historical details, making it a crucial vehicle for preserving social history.
Also Known As
lament keening funeral song Keening song
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