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 K

Knocknarea

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

Knocknarea is the mountain in County Sligo crowned by a massive cairn traditionally believed to be the tomb of Queen Medb, the formidable ruler of Connacht.

Detailed Definition
The forty-thousand-ton cairn, one of Ireland's largest, has never been excavated but legend insists it contains Medb standing upright in full armor, facing her Ulster enemies. The mountain dominates Sligo's landscape and appears in Yeats's poetry. Its presence connects mythological past to physical geography. In poetry, Knocknarea represents the eternal warrior queen, the landscape as monument to heroic age, and how death cannot diminish legendary figures. It symbolizes Medb's enduring challenge to Ulster, the permanence of reputation carved in stone, and how mythology transforms geography into sacred text that can be read across centuries.
Example
Example in poetry:
Knocknarea appears in poetry as the mountain topped by Queen Maeve's cairn in County Sligo; Poets invoke Knocknarea as a landmark where mythology and landscape physically merge; The massive cairn creates imagery of memorial, burden, and the physical presence of the past; Knocknarea's association with Maeve makes it a symbol of female sovereignty in Irish verse; In contemporary poetry, climbing Knocknarea becomes a pilgrimage connecting present to mythic past; Modern poets use the mountain to explore how landscape preserves and transmits story
Additional Notes
Knocknarea, crowned by Queen Maeve’s cairn (though historically pre-dates her), is mythically tied to the warrior queen Medb of Connacht; the mountain’s stark profile dominates Sligo’s landscape and appears in Yeats’s poetry as a symbol of enduring female power; poets can use Knocknarea to anchor myth in geography, explore burial customs, or meditate on legacy; the cairn’s unexcavated state preserves mystery—ideal for poems about the unknown or ancestral memory; it pairs with Benbulben as a twin mythic landmark of western Ireland.
Also Known As
Cnoc na Riabh Knocksarea Knocknareagh
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