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 L

leanbhán

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

A term from Irish-language poetry and folk tradition meaning "little child" or "infant," used as an endearment in lullabies, keen poetry, and lyric verse to evoke tenderness, vulnerability, or grief over a lost child.

Detailed Definition
Leanbhán is an Irish diminutive of leanbh (child), formed with the affectionate suffix -án, and carries a tone of gentle intimacy that English translations rarely capture fully. In the broader poetic tradition, it appears most naturally in caoineadh (keen or lament poetry), lullabies (suantraí), and bardic verse where the relationship between parent and child becomes a vehicle for deeper emotional or spiritual meaning. The word's sound — soft, lilting, and melodically suited to sung verse — made it a favourite in oral tradition, where the diminutive suffix itself communicates love and loss simultaneously. Its use in poetry often heightens pathos, particularly in elegiac contexts mourning an infant's death.
Example
Example in poetry:
In the Irish lullaby tradition, lines addressed directly to a leanbhán are common, such as the opening of a traditional suantraí that calls upon the child to sleep: the word functions both as a direct address and as an emotional anchor for the entire song. Similarly, in caoineadh verse — such as the tradition exemplified by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill's Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire — diminutive endearments of this kind transfer grief from adult loss into a register of primal, maternal tenderness.
Additional Notes
Etymology: From Old Irish lenb or lenbán (infant, nursling), related to the Latin lambere (to lick, nurse), suggesting early connotations of suckling infancy. The -án suffix is a productive Irish diminutive that adds warmth and smallness, comparable to the Scots Gaelic -an or Welsh -an suffixes in cognate Celtic languages. Related terms: leanbh (child, the base form); páiste (child, more general); naíonán (newborn, infant); naí (infant, archaic poetic form). Poetic categories: Most at home under Irish language poetry, lullaby tradition, elegy, and oral folk verse. Relevant to discussions of the suantraí (sleep-song) and caoineadh (lament) as distinct Irish poetic genres. Usage note: Translators should resist rendering leanbhán simply as "baby" or "child," as the diminutive suffix carries an emotional freight — of tenderness bordering on grief — that a neutral English noun cannot replicate. Some translators preserve the original term in romanised form alongside a gloss. Cross-references: See caoineadh, suantraí, caoine, keen, lament, elegy, diminutive.
Also Known As
little child darling baby infant
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