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 T

Tearmann

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

An Irish term meaning sanctuary or refuge, often associated with sacred or protected spaces in myth and folklore

Detailed Definition
Tearmann refers to a place of sanctuary, safety, or consecrated ground in Irish tradition, sometimes linked to church lands or fairy forts where harm was forbidden. In literary contexts, it symbolizes spiritual protection, inviolability, and the intersection of divine and earthly law. Poets invoke tearmann to explore themes of asylum, moral boundaries, and the sanctity of place, reflecting the deep Celtic reverence for protected spaces amid chaos or conflict.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Joseph Campbell’s The Gartan Mother's Lullaby, Tearmann is associated with peasant voices swelling in fragrant evening hymn, shifting its meaning from a legal sanctuary to a spiritual refuge created by sound and community faith; A poet might use tearmann to describe a personal mental space of refuge, drawing a parallel between the ancient legal protection of sanctuary and the modern need for psychological safety amidst chaos; In an elegy for a displaced community, the loss of the tearmann represents the destruction of cultural and spiritual anchors, emphasizing how displacement is not just physical but also a severing from protected, holy ground; Poets can juxtapose the inviolability of the tearmann with the brutality of invasion, using the violation of sanctuary as a powerful image of moral transgression and the collapse of social order; A nature poem might identify a secluded grove or a fairy fort as a natural tearmann, suggesting that certain places in the landscape retain an inherent sanctity that demands reverence and silence from visitors; In a philosophical lyric, the concept of tearmann is extended to mean the protective embrace of tradition and language, offering shelter against the eroding forces of time and cultural assimilation.
Additional Notes
Tearmann historically refers to land attached to a church or monastery that was granted legal immunity from secular violence and seizure, known as "sanctuary." In Celtic mythology and folklore, this concept overlaps with sacred natural sites like fairy forts or holy wells, which were also considered inviolable. For poetry students, tearmann offers a rich metaphor for psychological or spiritual refuge amidst chaos. It bridges the pre-Christian reverence for sacred groves with the Christian tradition of asylum, making it a powerful symbol for cultural continuity. When used in verse, it often contrasts the safety of the protected space with the danger of the outside world, emphasizing themes of peace, divine law, and the enduring power of tradition to provide shelter against historical trauma or personal turmoil.
Also Known As
Sanctuary Refuge Asylum
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