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.

After the death of my mother, 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.

My wife and I are simplifying our days. The server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit the quieter life we want.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the 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.

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

Dullahan

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 headless rider from Irish folklore who carries its own head. Its arrival is traditionally a sign that someone will die.

Detailed Definition
The dullahan is a grim Irish death figure, often imagined riding a black horse or driving a funeral coach while carrying a severed head like a lantern. Its grotesque mobility gives poets vivid material for scenes of pursuit, fate, and night travel. The rider may symbolize death's certainty, but also the disconnection between body and identity. In a poem, the dullahan can transform a rural road into a threshold where naming a person becomes perilous.
Example
Example in poetry:
The Dullahan, the headless horseman of Irish folklore, can create a vivid figure of terror in a narrative poem; The Dullahan rides past the gate holding its own head like a lantern; A poet may use the Dullahan's stopped horse as a sign that someone nearby is about to die; In a dark comic poem, the Dullahan searches the road for a name it has forgotten how to pronounce
Additional Notes
The Dullahan is a headless supernatural rider of Irish folklore whose appearance is traditionally associated with impending death. Modern retellings often emphasise dramatic details such as the rider carrying its own head, but versions of the tradition vary and should not be treated as a single fixed mythology. For poets, the figure combines pursuit, night travel, bodily dismemberment, and inexorable fate. It can turn a road or journey into an encounter with mortality. Compare headless horseman traditions, psychopomp, death omen, banshee, spectral rider, memento mori, folklore, and supernatural pursuit.
Other Meanings of “Dullahan”
Also Known As
Dulachan Dullachan Gan Ceann
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