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 D

Deirdre

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

Deirdre is a tragic heroine whose beauty and fate bring sorrow to Ulster.

Detailed Definition
Her love for Naoise and their doomed escape from Conchobar’s court is a central tale of the Ulster Cycle. Deirdre’s story is rich in poetic themes of love, loss, and destiny. She symbolizes the destructive power of beauty and the inevitability of fate.
Example
Example in poetry:
Deirdre appears as the woman whose prophesied beauty brought destruction to Ulster in Irish tragic poetry; Poets use Deirdre of the Sorrows as a figure for beauty that becomes a curse rather than blessing; Her elopement with Naoise provides material for verses about love that defies social order; The image of Deirdre's suicide rather than submit to Conchobar creates powerful tragic closure; In feminist retellings, poets explore Deirdre's lack of agency in a story where men fight over her; Yeats and Synge made Deirdre central to the Irish literary revival, using her as a symbol of Ireland itself
Additional Notes
Deirdre’s tragic tale—the “Exile of the Sons of Uisneach”—is one of Irish myth’s great love stories, where her beauty incites jealousy, betrayal, and mass death; prophesied at birth to bring ruin, she chooses love (Naoise) over safety, defying King Conchobar; her lament for Naoise is among the most poignant in Celtic literature; poets may use Deirdre to explore fate, female autonomy, or the cost of desire; her story has inspired countless adaptations (Yeats, Synge), making her a bridge between ancient myth and modern drama.
Also Known As
Derdriu Deirdriu Dearduil
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