Gaps in lyrics

[Tim Slattery]

I'm setting a song with two verses. It's a madrigal, so there are
fairly long stretches of "fa la la..." that are identical in the two
verses. I'd like to have them "fa la la" part printed only once.

So...I've set verse one with all the words, including "fa la la".
That's fine. I'd like to have verse two show only the different words,
and leave a space where the "fa la la" is. 

But I can't figure out how to tell Lily to not match word to the
stretch of notes that correspond to the "fa la la" for the second
verse. 

It looks like I could use \skip ... but I'd have to have one for each
note to be skipped. Is there a way to tell Lilypond how many notes or
measures to skip?

-- 
Tim Slattery
tim <at> risingdove <dot> com