A bride is set on horseback and sent off with prayers, but she never reaches her husband's village: the Kızılırmak takes her. The lament filed in the TRT repertoire as no. 1893 under the title "Allah Allah Dedik Ata Bindirdik" is known locally by the name in its last line, "Zilha Gelin". The Ankara State Conservatory's collecting team recorded it on disc on 5 July 1943 from Mehmet Hulusi Er in the village of Zigala (today Aydınca) in the central district of Amasya, and entered it in their list as "Kızılırmak". The notation is by Ateş Köyoğlu. Lament though it is, it is not sung in free rhythm; it was written down as a kırık hava, a metred song, in an asymmetrical 5/8.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: TRT THM 1893, kırık hava; Repertükül classes it as "ağıt" (lament)
  • Region: Amasya; recorded in the village of Zigala (Aydınca)
  • Source performer: Mehmet Hulusi Er; the notation gives the performers as "source performer, group"
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory (team of Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen)
  • Collection date: 5 July 1943; title in the conservatory list "Kızılırmak", disc 1108/B-3
  • Transcribed by: Ateş Köyoğlu
  • Mode: Hüseynî scale; final and closing note La
  • Metre: 5/8
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • TRT link: TRT repertoire no. 1893. Since TRT does not publish catalogue entries online item by item, the notation data, lyrics and two audio files are available on Repertükül.
  • Ministry of Culture and Tourism audio: in the folk song list of the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism as "Zilha Gelin", listen

Lyrics

Allah Allah dedik ata bindirdik (leyli can)
Hayır duayla yola gönderdik
Gıble tarafında elden aldırdık (leyli can)
N'ettin Kızılırmak allı gelini (ah Zilha gelini)
Ey Martin getir şu gartalı vuralım
Dalgıç getir şu gelini bulalım
Biz gelinsiz nasıl köye varalım
N'ettin Kızılırmak Zilha gelini (aman aman gülümü)
Ey Kızılırmak bırakmamış huyunu
Kurban ettik sürüleri koyunu
Göremedim güveyinin boyunu
N'ettin Kızılırmak Zilha gelini (aman aman gülümü)

The first stanza is spoken by the "we" who send the bride off, and in English it runs roughly like this: crying "Allah, Allah" we set her on the horse, we sent her on her way with blessings, towards the qibla we let her be taken from our hands; Kızılırmak, what have you done with the bride in red. "Gıble tarafı" is the direction of the qibla, which in Anatolia means roughly south; the line says the bride was lost somewhere in that direction. In the second stanza helplessness takes over: bring the rifle, let us shoot that eagle; bring a diver, let us find the bride; how can we go back to the village without her. According to the glossary on the notation, "Martin" is a kind of rifle (the Martini) and "Zilha" a local form of the name Zeliha.

The eagle can be read in two ways. It may be a real bird of prey circling over the water, or a name given to the river itself, which seized the bride and carried her off; the lament does not say. In the last stanza the river is addressed like a creature that has not given up its old habits. Flocks and sheep were sacrificed, and still the groom's figure was never seen. The line tells us that the bride never met her husband, and that the wedding ended on the road.

Story

The event the lament describes can be read plainly from its words: a bride named Zeliha, sent off with the wedding procession, was swept away while crossing the Kızılırmak and never found. Nothing in print could be traced on when this happened, between which villages, or who the bride and groom were; the collection slip, for its part, says nothing beyond the place, the date and the singer. That the lament was sung in Zigala does not prove the event took place in or near that village; nor does the slip say from whom the source performer learned it.

Musical Features

The pitch data in the catalogue entry are plain: the Hüseynî scale, La for both the final and the last note, and a seven-note range running from La up to Sol. In Nail Demircioğlu's table of Amasya's 48 TRT folk songs the piece is listed as Hüseynî in 5/8. In that table the 5/8 metre appears in five songs, and all five are tunes the conservatory team recorded in the summer of 1943. Haluk Yücel's 2018 genre table places the song among the kırık havas under the name "Zilha Gelini".

Laments are often sung as uzun hava, in free rhythm, so the fact that this one is written in a regular asymmetrical metre is a detail worth noting. The last line of every stanza turns on the question "N'ettin Kızılırmak", and the additions that follow it, "ah Zilha gelini" and "aman aman gülümü", give the melody a recurring turn that stands in for a refrain. The "leyli can" added to the first and third lines of the opening stanza fills out the ends of the melodic phrases.

Performers and Recordings

The lament can be heard in two recordings: one is the source performer's voice, the other a present-day performance. The fourteen-piece list in the regional music section of the Ministry's Amasya directorate also has a recording titled "Zilha Gelin"; since the list carries no catalogue data, that it is this lament can only be inferred from the match between that name and the last line of the notation. On the same day Mehmet Hulusi Er also sang for the team a deyiş called "Merhaba", an elegy titled "Peygamberin Medhiyesi" and the song "Bayburt". Nor is any later release of the lament on disc or album documented.

Collections and Variants

The work goes by three names: "Kızılırmak" in the conservatory list, "Allah Allah Dedik Ata Bindirdik" after its first line in the TRT notation, and "Zilha Gelin(i)" in the Ministry list and in Yücel. Yücel's table also contains an uzun hava called simply "Kızılırmak". Whether that is a free-rhythm form of the same lament or another melody about the river cannot be told from the table, so the two are kept apart. The Melody of the Yeşilırmak, the article that treats Amasya's songs as a whole, likewise matches the name "Zilha Gelin" with this entry in the repertoire.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources