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 J

Jig

Dance
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 lively folk dance in compound time, associated especially with Ireland and Britain. In poetry, it often conveys merriment, rustic vitality, comic movement, or communal celebration.

Detailed Definition
The jig is a quick, springing dance with roots in the folk traditions of the British Isles and wider Europe. Its energetic steps and lilting rhythm made it popular in village entertainment, theatre, and instrumental music. Poets use the jig to create a sense of physical liveliness, rural festivity, or playful disorder, and the term may carry comic or satirical force. A jig can also symbolise compulsive movement, social performance, or a desperate attempt at cheerfulness, especially when dancing is set against hardship, age, danger, or death.
Example
Example in poetry:
“The fiddles leapt into a jig, and sorrow briefly lost its footing” uses lively rhythm to interrupt sadness; A poet may describe raindrops performing a jig upon a roof; “He danced a desperate jig beneath the executioner’s gaze” gives the dance a darkly ironic meaning; Jig imagery can convey rural festivity, comic movement, nervous compulsion, or an outward cheerfulness that conceals fear and hardship.
Additional Notes
The jig is both a dance and a musical type, usually recognised by lively compound rhythm and springing movement. In poetry, it can animate scenes of weddings, fairs, taverns, or rural gatherings, but it may also become grotesque or ironic when someone is forced to dance by fear, pain, or death. Students should attend to pace, repeated stresses, and verbs of hopping or leaping. Related terms include gigue, reel, hornpipe, folk dance, comic performance, dance tune, and kinetic rhythm.
Other Meanings of “Jig”
Also Known As
Gigue Template
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