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

Dreich

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

Dreary, bleak, and tediously grey; used especially of dull, cold, wet Scottish weather.

Detailed Definition
"Dreich" is perhaps the most culturally loaded of all Scottish weather words, capturing not just meteorological greyness but the existential weight of sustained bleakness. It describes days that are not dramatically stormy but relentlessly, oppressively dull, and it has become a symbol of Scottish climate and, by extension, Scottish stoic endurance. In poetry "dreich" does enormous work with four letters, evoking the texture of Scottish experience — the low sky, the wet stone, the muted light — with a precision and economy that no English word approaches.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Dreich" means dull, bleak, dreary, or persistently grey and wet, especially of weather; A poet might write: "The dreich November sky pressed doun / on the empty streets of the quiet town." for atmospheric scene-setting; "Scotland kens the dreich as kin — / it shapes the soul from the skin in." celebrates stoic national character; "The dreich drove me inside at last / tae books and fire and tea held fast." turns bleakness into cosy contrast; "Even the dreich has beauty in't — / the silver sky, the pewter glint." finds unexpected aesthetics in grey weather; "He wore the dreich like a second coat, / his spirit high though skies were not." shows resilience; "In dreich and drear the heather blooms — / life finds its way through grey perfumes." offers natural optimism
Additional Notes
Dreich is possibly the most beloved and frequently cited Scots word in contemporary usage, celebrated in word polls and cultural surveys as capturing something essential about Scottish weather and temperament. Its usefulness lies in its precision: dreich is not merely wet, nor merely cold, nor merely grey — it is the combination of all three, sustained and relentless, that specific variety of miserable weather familiar to anyone who has lived in Scotland. For poetry students, "dreich" is also a tonal marker: a poem described as "dreich" in atmosphere is one of sustained, unrelieved bleakness. Compare with "haar" (sea fog), "smirr" (fine drizzle), and "blashey-wadder" for related weather vocabulary.
Also Known As
Bleak Dreary Miserable Drizzly
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