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 S

Skirl

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 high, piercing cry or sound; most famously the sound of bagpipes in full voice.

Detailed Definition
"Skirl" is the word for the unmistakable, high, penetrating sound of the bagpipes, and it carries with it all the complex emotions that sound evokes in Scottish cultural life. In poetry it signals battle, celebration, mourning, and national pride simultaneously, and its sharp consonants and high vowel perfectly mimic the sound itself. Beyond bagpipes, "skirl" describes any piercing cry, human or animal, and in verse it creates immediate sonic impact, cutting through the poem as the pipes cut through noise and distance.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Skirl" means a high-pitched wailing sound, especially of bagpipes; A poet might write: "The pipes' skirl tore the morning air — / and grief and glory both were there." for a martial or funeral poem; "The skirl began across the ben — / and drew the whole glen's hearts again." uses sound to unite community; "A skirl of wind through the mountain pass — / the land itself singing mass." applies the word to natural sound; "She heard the skirl of distant pipes — / a sound that cuts through all the gripes." evokes both loss and pride; "The skirl rose clear above the crowd — / a single voice, defiant, loud." applies the term metaphorically to protest or speech
Additional Notes
Skirl is primarily associated with the bagpipe, and this association is so strong that the word's other meanings (a high, piercing human cry) tend to be coloured by it. The "skirl of the pipes" has a particular quality — penetrating, carrying, slightly unearthly — that distinguishes it from all other musical sounds. In poetry, "skirl" signals the presence of Highland culture, martial tradition, and that ambivalent mixture of pride and mourning that the pipes evoke in Scottish cultural memory. For students, the appearance of "skirl" in a poem immediately activates questions of cultural identity, Highland versus Lowland, Scottish versus British, pride versus elegy. It is a word that carries an entire cultural landscape within it.
Also Known As
Shrill sound Wail Blast
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