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 P

pannage

Archaic Terms
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

The right to pasture pigs in a forest to feed on acorns and other fallen fruit; also the payment made for this right.

Detailed Definition
Pannage derives from Medieval Latin "pasnagium" and describes the custom of turning domestic pigs loose in forest or woodland during autumn to fatten on fallen acorns, beech mast, and other nuts. It was a formal right regulated by forest law, with the pannage season—typically from late September to November—carefully controlled to protect the forest's other uses. In poetry pannage appears as a specific instance of the complex web of customary rights that connected the rural poor to the forest's resources, and its loss through enclosure and the restriction of forest access was a significant grievance. The image of pigs rooting among fallen leaves for acorns is both practically precise and symbolically suggestive—the domestic animal in the wild landscape, the overlap between cultivation and wilderness that the forest represented.
Example
Example in poetry:
Pannage rights — the right to turn pigs into woodland to feed on fallen mast — regulated the crucial autumn fattening season in the medieval forest economy, and poems about that world must attend to these specific legal arrangements; A poet might write "at pannage time the forest filled with the sound of pigs, their rooting in the leaf-litter a form of harvest, the mast disappearing into their patient industry"; The New Forest still formally maintains pannage — the ancient practice continues under the authority of the Verderers, the pigs turned out each autumn to consume the acorns that are toxic to the ponies — giving the word a living as well as historical context; In verse about the medieval forest system, pannage represents the complex web of rights and obligations that made the forest a managed resource rather than simply wild land — the commoner's right to its bounty regulated by law and custom; The image of pigs rooting in woodland — their snouts turning the leaf-litter, their broad bodies moving between the tree roots — is both practically precise and symbolically suggestive, the domestic animal in the wild landscape enacting the overlap between cultivation and wildness; Poems about the enclosure of forest commons often include pannage among the rights lost — the right to fatten pigs in the autumn forest one of the most important resources stripped from commoners when the forest was privatized.
Additional Notes
Pannage should be understood by students within the broader context of forest law and common rights, as one of several specific seasonal rights that structured the relationship between rural communities and the forests they depended on. The pannage season — typically from late September to November, when the mast lay thick on the ground — was carefully regulated by the forest courts (the Verderers and their officers) to prevent overexploitation of the resource. Students interested in the New Forest should know that pannage is still practiced there annually, with commoners' pigs turned out in the autumn to consume the acorns that are toxic to the forest's famous ponies — making pannage not just a historical curiosity but a living conservation practice. This contemporary relevance gives the word a new dimension: the ancient right now serving modern ecological purposes, the medieval institution preserved because its function remains necessary. Students studying the history of common rights should trace how pannage, alongside turbary, estovers, and herbage, was gradually extinguished in most areas during the enclosure period, while surviving in a few places like the New Forest. Related terms: mast, turbary, estovers, herbage, verderer.
Also Known As
mast pig-pasture acorn-feed swine-pasture
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