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 Y

Yill

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

Ale; the Scots word for beer or ale, associated with tavern culture and good fellowship.

Detailed Definition
"Yill" is the Scots word for ale, and it carries with it the whole world of the Scottish tavern, the howff, the convivial gathering of friends over shared drink. It appears throughout Burns's social and comic verse as the lubricant of conversation, the fuel of argument, and the medium of friendship. In the tradition of Scottish social poetry, yill is both literal refreshment and symbol of the communal pleasures of ordinary life — the gathered company, the warmth of the inn, the stories exchanged over a cup. "Yill" is the word for the poetry of good fellowship.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Yill" means ale, especially home-brewed ale; Burns uses "yill" in celebratory and satirical contexts; A poet might write: "A cup of yill by the peat fire's side — / wi' all the comfort in the world inside." for a poem of simple contentment; "The yill was brewed frae the barley gold — / a harvest gift against the cold." grounds the drink in agricultural tradition; "She poured the yill wi' generous hand — / the oldest welcome in the land." uses the drink as hospitality; "The yill spoke louder than the man — / and told the truth the way it can." applies the drink satirically to loss of inhibition; "Raise the yill tae all who've gone — / their memory, like the drink, lives on." uses ale for an elegiac toast; "In yill and song the evening passed — / the kind of night that's built tae last." closes a communal poem with warmth
Additional Notes
Yill is the Scots word for ale or beer and appears frequently in convivial, comic, and social poetry, especially in tavern scenes or celebratory song. Like waught, it often signifies more than drink itself: fellowship, hospitality, rustic pleasure, or communal identity. Burns-era verse frequently uses such vocabulary to create authentic social atmosphere and preserve oral tradition. Students should note that alcohol imagery in Scottish poetry may function symbolically, politically, or emotionally, not merely descriptively. Related terms include alehouse, dram, and waught, all important in vernacular literary culture.
Also Known As
Ale Beer Brew
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