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

loaning

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 lane, a grassy track, or an open strip of pasture land, often between fields.

Detailed Definition
"Loaning" derives from Scots "loan," meaning a narrow road or grassy path, typically bordered by hedges or walls. In rural Scots poetry, it evokes the pastoral landscape of everyday work and travel. Jean Elliot uses "ilka green loaning" to contrast the former joy of communal singing with the present moaning of bereaved women, turning a familiar path into a site of haunting absence. The term appears in ballads and songs to ground verse in a specific, recognisable geography, making abstract grief tangible. Its soft, open vowel sound suits melancholic verse, and its recurrence in Scots pastoral tradition links human emotion to the land itself.
Example
Example in poetry:
loaning|"But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning" (Jean Elliot, "A Lament for Flodden") uses "loaning" to ground the poem's grief in a specific, familiar landscape, showing that even the green lanes where people once walked are now sites of mourning.; "Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning" (Jean Elliot, "A Lament for Flodden") repeats the image, reinforcing how the open, grassy paths have become synonymous with the community's collective sorrow.; "There's a bogle by the bour-tree at the lang loan heid" (W D Cocker, "The Bogle") uses "loaning" to describe the head of a long lane, situating the supernatural encounter in a recognisable rural setting.; "And O! be sure to fear the Loan alway!" (from a poem) personifies the "Loan" as something to be feared, suggesting that the lane itself carries a moral or spiritual warning.
Additional Notes
"Loaning" refers to a specific feature of the Scottish rural landscape—a narrow lane, grassy track, or strip of pasture land, often bordered by hedges or walls, that serves as a thoroughfare between fields or settlements. The word's soft 'g' sound and open vowels give it a gentle, pastoral quality that suits its association with everyday rural life. In Elliot's "A Lament for Flodden," the repeated image of "ilka green loaning" transforms these humble lanes into sites of collective mourning, showing how grief saturates the entire landscape. For poetry students, "loaning" offers a lesson in how poets use specific topographical vocabulary to ground abstract emotions in concrete, recognisable places. The term appears in various Scots poems and ballads, often as a setting for romantic encounters, supernatural events, or moments of reflection. Its etymology is uncertain, possibly related to the Old English "lane" or a Norse root, but its usage is distinctly Scottish. In teaching, contrasting "loaning" with more generic terms like "path" or "lane" reveals how Scots vocabulary often carries a warmth and specificity that makes verse feel rooted in a particular place. The word's frequent appearance in pastoral and elegiac poetry underscores the importance of landscape in Scottish literature, where the land itself becomes a character in the drama of loss and remembrance.
Also Known As
Loan Loan-head (head of the lane) Loan-end Loanin Lang loan (long lane) Green loaning Loan-ride (lane ride) Loan-side
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