When one thinks of the oral culture of Amasya, the first things that come to mind are long folk songs, henna-night airs, legends and tales. Yet this body of memory also has a smaller layer, scattered through the fabric of everyday life. Riddles, rhymes and the blessings and curses known among the people as alkış and kargış, forms in which language meets play, wit and feeling, serve at times as the entertainment of a winter evening, at times as the opening of a children's game, and at times as the shortest way for a person to voice joy or anger. These sayings have been handed down from generation to generation, usually without ever being written down, carried from old to young and from the table to the street until they reached the present day. Folklorists group these forms under the heading of "conversational genres", because each of them is spoken within a conversation, a game or a ceremony, at a particular moment and to a particular person.

Tracing these small genres in Amasya depends largely on the labour of collectors. The riddles of the region have been recorded, with their dialect features preserved, in compilations published by the provincial culture directorate. Words belonging to Amasya appear in the Turkish Language Association's Derleme Sözlüğü (Compilation Dictionary) together with the names of their districts and villages, and in 2022 Kürşat Efe classified this material according to semantic fields. The blessings and curses, for their part, were collected and examined in detail by Betül Demirelma through interviews conducted in the summer of 2025 with informants born in Suluova and Merzifon. The sections below draw on these compilations and on general studies of Turkish folk literature.

The Riddle and the Tradition of Riddle-Telling

A riddle (bilmece) is a word game that describes the qualities of a thing in veiled terms without naming it, leaving the listener to discover what it is. The word derives in Western Turkic from the verb bilmek, "to know"; the oldest riddle texts committed to writing in Turkic are found in the Codex Cumanicus, written in the Kipchak language of the Cumans. A riddle need not take the form of a question; most often it is a phrase of a few words, a couplet or a rhyming quatrain, and many are recited rhythmically, like rhymes. The object in question is described through exaggeration, inversion or disguise as some entirely different being: a walnut is likened to an oven, fire to an ox, a pair of scissors to a pomegranate-seller's daughter. The listener's task is to lift this veil and find the everyday object beneath it.

In Amasya, asking riddles was one of the favourite amusements of the gatherings held in village rooms on long winter nights. As in many parts of Anatolia, neighbours who gathered in one house of an evening would take turns telling tales, singing folk songs and posing riddles. Describing an object or an idea in veiled, figurative language while the listeners tried to work it out was an enjoyable game that drew young and old alike into the same contest. By turning nature, household goods, fruit, farm implements and animals into amusing puzzles, riddles sharpened a child's mind, nourished the powers of observation and taught the child to see familiar things with new eyes.

Riddles Collected in Amasya

Foremost among the riddles collected in the region are those concerning the sky. The answer to "It went 'crack' and fell into the bush" (Çıt dedi, çalıya düştü) is the sun; in a handful of words it captures the sun that appears all at once from behind the mountains in the morning and casts its light first upon the bushes and trees. The riddle for lightning is longer: "I went from here with a whizz, with twelve stars; its sting is like an onion, its body like a falcon." Here the sound, speed and burning force of the bolt are given together, its sting compared to an onion and its swiftness to a falcon. Forms such as suvan (onion) and vızınan (with a whizz) show that these riddles were recorded in the pronunciation of the Amasya dialect. The same dialect feature can be seen in the spelling Çıt dedi çalıya düşdü.

The home and the kitchen are the richest source of riddles. The answer to "I have an oven that takes four loaves" is the walnut, whose kernel, divided into four chambers within the hard shell, is likened to four loaves pushed into an oven. "A long trough with a hole in its bottom" describes the chimney; "Two brothers look side by side" the fire tongs; and "Two sisters-in-law of the same height" a double-leaved door. In the riddle for fire, "The yellow ox lay down and does not rise, the black ox went away and does not return", the yellow flame lying in the hearth and the black smoke that leaves through the chimney never to come back appear to have been conceived as a matching pair. Scissors are described almost in the manner of a folk song: "Nar nar narladı, nar duvarda parladı; narcı kızın gelmedi, nar duvardan inmedi" (the pomegranate shone upon the wall; your pomegranate-girl did not come, the pomegranate did not come down from the wall). The gleam of the scissors hanging on the wall merges with the sound play of the riddle.

Field and rural life are also directly reflected in the riddles. The answer to "I wander under the ground, I am lovelier than yesterday's bride" is the köten, the plough; the shine of the iron share, polished by friction in the soil, is likened to the finery of a new bride. "The bride is inside, her hair is outside" describes the maize cob whose tassels spill from its husk, while "Long as a rope, wide as a quilt" describes the road. The riddle for the ox-cart carries the very sound of village life: "It comes from the mountain like a peak, its arms like boughs; it bends and drinks water, it cries out like a kid." The sound of the creaking wheels is compared to the bleating of a young goat, and the cart's arms to the boughs of a tree. The riddle for the cat, "Min-min footed, minti eared, in a dappled coat, with a mallet head", draws the animal in a few strokes, almost like a picture.

Some riddles go beyond concrete objects. The answer to "It cannot be bought in the market, it cannot be wrapped in a handkerchief, one never tires of its taste" is sleep, and the answer to "I set a griddle on the road and left all who came and went hungry" is fasting. The riddle for the clock, "Gup gup bathhouse, its dome complete; I took a bride whose father is an imam", brings together a domed form, a regular ticking and the task of announcing the hours of prayer. The example showing that the riddle tradition is no frozen mould concerns the train: "Long, long rooms that chase one another." With the arrival of the railway in the region, carriages too entered the riddles, and the old pattern was applied to a new object. This shows that the riddle was recreated by every generation and remained a living genre that kept pace with change in its surroundings.

The Rhyme and Its Varieties

A tekerleme is a set formula, usually metrical and rhymed, and more often built on sound and rhythm than on meaning. It appears within genres such as the folk tale, the story, the riddle and folk theatre, and it is also an inseparable part of children's games. The earliest written examples of the tekerleme in Turkish literature go back to the eleventh century and the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk of Mahmud of Kashgar. The form goes by different names from region to region: in Eastern Anatolia the word döşeme is used in this sense, in Southern Anatolia sayışma. In the sessions of the âşık minstrels, the contests that the saz poets conduct in hard-to-pronounce words or in ever-narrowing rhymes are also called tekerleme or tekellüm, while in Karagöz shadow theatre and the ortaoyunu similar word games are known as muhavere.

Rhymes are the most cheerful form of the play of sound and rhythm, and they fall into several branches according to where they are used. The counting-out rhymes recited at the start of children's games to choose who is "it" or to pick teams, the set formulas at the beginning, middle and end of tales, and the tongue-twisters that trip the tongue when said quickly are all different faces of the tekerleme. In a counting-out rhyme the child doing the counting points at the players one by one on each syllable or word, and whoever the finger points to when the rhyme ends is chosen. Tongue-twisters, by contrast, are sayings in which similar sounds pile upon one another and the tongue struggles to turn, as in "Şu yoğurdu sarımsaklasak da mı saklasak, sarımsaklamasak da mı saklasak" (shall we put garlic in this yoghurt and keep it, or keep it without garlic), and they are mostly recited in contests between rivals. These rhythmic sayings make a child's tongue nimble and strengthen the memory as well, serving as a key that opens the door to the game and the tale.

Tale Rhymes

Tale rhymes are recited to draw listeners away from the everyday world and prepare them for the extraordinary realm of the tale. Formulas that open with "Once there was, once there was not; in olden times, when the sieve was in the straw" usually continue in long preambles describing a topsy-turvy world, their meaning deliberately muddled. In one preamble known in many parts of Anatolia, the storyteller mentions Amasya while describing his journey: "On we went and on we drove, from Amasya and from Tire; eating bread and cheese where there was water, melon and watermelon where there was none, we reached the place we were bound for. We have come to the tale; a tale is its name, its flavour comes out in the telling." This rhyme cannot be regarded as peculiar to Amasya; even so, the fact that the city's name passes from mouth to mouth alongside a town at the other end of Anatolia, as stages of a long road, is a small sign of Amasya's place in the popular imagination. That the preamble ends with "Whoever does not listen well, let the Arab Nurse eat him up" shows the rhyme warning the inattentive listener with a half-joking curse. In the closing "wish" or "three apples" section of the tale, the storyteller offers a good wish to the audience, saying "Three apples fell from the sky: one on the heads of the brave, one for the one who strung this tale together, and one on the heads of those who listened"; thus the tale closes with a blessing and the listener returns to the real world.

Rain and Crocus Rhymes

The most striking examples of rhymes in Amasya are those recited in seasonal ceremonies in which children took part. In springs of drought the adults would go out to pray for rain, sacrifice an animal and visit tombs and dervish lodges, while the children held ceremonies of their own. According to a custom recorded in the village of Şeyhli in Taşova, the children would catch a frog and place it in a sieve, carry the covered sieve over their heads from house to house and call out: "Göden göden göğdüren, göğden yağmur indiren; tekneler hamur istiyor, yerler çamur istiyor" (you who bring rain down from the sky; the kneading troughs want dough, the earth wants mud). They asked the houses whose doors they knocked on for butter, flour and bread, and at each door they said, "May the one who gives butter have a son, may the one who gives flour have a daughter." After giving some food, the householder would pour a bucket of water over the children; the ingredients collected were then cooked and eaten together. In this ceremony rhyme and blessing are interwoven: the rhythmic words that summon the rain are completed at once by a set formula wishing well to the giver.

A similar custom is connected with the crocuses that herald the spring. In the village of Akören in Merzifon, when the first crocuses broke through the soil, the children would gather and go from house to house reciting: "Çiğdem çiğdem çiçecük, ebem olan köçecik; çaldan çuldan, bir kaşık yağdan" (crocus, crocus, little flower; a spoonful of butter, from this and that), "may the one who gives have a golden-headed son, may the one who does not give have a bald-headed daughter." Pilaf was cooked with the bulgur and butter gathered from the houses and eaten by all. At the end of the rhyme blessing and curse stand side by side: the house that gives is remembered with good wishes, while the house that does not is met with a half-joking imprecation. Just as these sayings taught children, within a game, their place in the community, the value of sharing and the cycle of the seasons, they also show how early in life people acquired the formulas of blessing and cursing.

The Language of Play and the Words of Merzifon

Because rhymes live alongside games, the vocabulary of play is also part of this world. The children's game words recorded in the Derleme Sözlüğü for Amasya, and especially for Merzifon, are noteworthy. In Merzifon the player who is "it" is called güdekçi and a turn in the game güdek; hide-and-seek is known as siğnebitti. A game played hand in hand is called boran horam, a game of leaping over four children bent over with their backs to one another güvercin taklası ("pigeon's somersault"), and a game played with marbles kındak. Tipcat is called dikme çelik, the wishbone game odura, the target stone set in the middle of a game totik, and the flat stone used in stone games emen. The spoilsport child who sulks and whines is ağlamsuk, while the one who falls behind in a game is called gangak. The counting-out rhymes recited to choose who would be "it" opened the door to a world of play built from these words.

Today this world of play has largely moved into school playgrounds and project events. Under the Traditional Children's Games Project run by the Ministry of National Education, a ceremony was held in Merzifon in June 2026; the final of tombik, one of the games that had been falling into oblivion, was played, and on the same day pupils who had placed in the competitions of the "Riches of Our Language Project" received awards. Events of this kind are seen as a way of introducing to new generations the games that have withdrawn from the street and the rhymes that accompany them.

Alkış and Kargış: Blessings and Curses

Another emotionally charged form of oral culture is alkış and kargış, that is, the blessings and curses spoken among the people. The word alkış comes from the Turkic root alkamak, "to praise, to give thanks". In the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, Mahmud of Kashgar explains alkış as "praying, praising, recounting someone's good deeds" and gives the example "ol begge alkış berdi" (he praised the bey); in the same work the equivalent of kargış is given as "curse, malediction, imprecation". In the Derleme Sözlüğü too, alkış appears with the meaning "benediction, good wish" and kargış with "imprecation, curse". Although today the word alkış is used mostly for applause, the appreciation shown by clapping, in folk speech it lives on as the old name for words of good wishes.

The roots of blessing and cursing reach back to a very ancient time when the word was believed to carry power in itself. Scholars note that primitive prayers were intertwined with magic and sorcery, and that words spoken in fixed formulas were believed to set sacred powers in motion when repeated. According to Şükrü Elçin, these prayers outlived the Shamanist, Buddhist and Manichaean eras and continued with a new outlook under Islam, the Turkish people conveying their wishes and supplications to God in their mother tongue and in plain language. Blessings, whose finest examples in Turkish literature are found in the Book of Dede Korkut, gradually lost their magical character and became expressions of courtesy and good will. Pertev Naili Boratav divides these sayings into two groups: on the one hand short stock formulas that adorn speech, such as "May God grant your wish" and "May all you touch turn to gold"; on the other, sayings that can be counted small works of art for their imagery and invention, such as "May God keep your hand from the threshing floor and your tongue from lies."

Alkış also had a counterpart in palace protocol. In Ottoman ceremonial, the words of praise and good wishes shouted in unison by the çavuşes of the Imperial Council at ceremonies for the sultan and the viziers, especially at the festival receptions, were called alkış. When the sultan sat on the throne or mounted his horse he was acclaimed with words such as "May your path be open and your fortune ever-increasing, my sultan; live a thousand years with your life and your state"; the princes (şehzades), the grand vizier and the other viziers were likewise saluted by the çavuşes with the appropriate formulas. This showy ceremony was maintained by the acclamation çavuşes until the Tanzimat (1839), and the custom of acclaiming the viziers was abolished after the Tanzimat. Sayings used among the people such as "God grant you safety", "May God reunite you" and "May God let you grow old on one pillow" are the everyday counterpart of this tradition.

Blessings in Amasya

The blessings collected in Amasya take their source from human life itself and are usually spoken after something has actually happened. When a kindness is received, people say "May God be pleased with you", "May your life be long", "Health to your hands and arms" and "May your hands and arms never see trouble". For abundance and plenty there are blessings such as "May God make your table a pilgrim's table", "May God give your table the plenty of Abraham", "May Hızır visit your table" and "May your house never lack guests". The newly married are told "May God let you grow old on one pillow" and "May your life be long and your wedding be in autumn", and parents "May God let you see your children's happiness." Someone setting out on a journey is told "Go like water and come back like water" and "May your road be open", while "May no stone touch your foot" is a wish to shield a loved one from every harm. For trade and earnings the sayings "May all you touch turn to gold" and "May God make your work prosper" are used.

Blessings concerning health, dependence and death, for their part, voice the deepest anxieties of human beings. Sayings such as "May God not give an ailment and then make one search for its cure", "May God never make anyone dependent on the hands of others", "May God never bring anyone to a stranger's door" and "May God never make one beholden to the base" reflect an outlook that seeks to preserve independence and dignity. The blessing "May God not give death in youth nor cruelty in old age" gathers the fear at both ends of a human life into a single sentence, while the saying "Three days in bed, the fourth day in the earth" expresses the wish to die without lying long in bed and without becoming a burden to anyone. After a death people say "May his soul rejoice and his abode be paradise" and "May God give health to those who remain". The saying "Better it fall upon property than upon life", used when a danger has been averted, is the product of a practical wisdom that weighs the loss of goods against the safety of life. The study also stresses that the blessings women spoke when seeing their husbands off to work, and that mothers spoke for their children, were an ordinary part of daily life.

Some of the blessings of Amasya are woven from religious expressions. Sayings such as "May God make you a neighbour of our Prophet", "May God never part you from your religion and faith", "May what you drink be Zamzam water", "When you die may many recite the Fatiha for you" and "May your funeral have a large congregation" reflect a world of belief that wishes for the reward of good deeds in this world to follow into the next. Other blessings bear the traces of local speech: "May his chimney smoke" (Bacası tütesice) and "May his hearth burn" (Ocağı yanasıca) are old blessing formulas wishing that the hearth of the house may endure and the family stay together. The inversion of the same formula in curses as "May your hearth go out" clearly shows that blessing and curse are nourished by the same images.

Curses in Amasya

Curses are generally words directed by someone who has been wronged, left helpless or hurt at the person who caused it. The examples collected in Amasya are framed as the speaker taking refuge in God's protection and turning His wrath upon the one who did harm. The subjects are wide-ranging: accident and calamity ("May God send you unknown calamities", "May black news come of him"), illness ("May you be seized by incurable ills", "May he be stricken in the liver"), house and hearth ("May your house and hearth be ruined", "May owls roost on your house", "May owls hoot in your hearth"), poverty and dependence ("May you go to a stranger's door and see what it is", "May you go to the water and remain thirsty"), exile ("God willing, may you fall into exile") and death ("May he be laid in the black earth", "May his ledger be closed"). Sayings such as "May a hornet sting your tongue" and "May lying tongues be struck dumb" are aimed at the gossip and the liar. The study shows that curses are uttered mostly in quarrels within the family, in the estrangements of engaged couples and lovers, against those who stir up strife, and in conflicts between neighbours.

Among the curses of Amasya there is a curious group spoken as oaths on bread and on what is sacred. In sayings such as "May the Qur'an strike my eyes", "May God's bounty strike my eyes and knees" and "May bread strike my eyes", the speaker wishes that the holy book or God's bounty may punish them if what they have said proves untrue; the words "May my milk be forbidden to you", spoken by a mother, are of the same kind. Formulas such as "May bread strike you" and "May God's bounty strike you" reflect, in the language of cursing, the deep reverence felt for bread and for the gifts of God. In these sayings the speaker vouches for their own truthfulness rather than wishing ill on another. In oaths of the type "If I said it, may both my eyes run down before me, may I never see my children's faces again", the aim, as Demirelma notes, is to convince the other person rather than to wish harm on oneself. The words "Shame on me", spoken in moments of regret and self-reproach, are likewise a curse turned upon oneself to express sorrow.

Curses are softened when they are directed at a loved one. As Boratav points out, a verb carrying the sense of a curse is turned into a joke by being put into the negative; gebermeyesice ("may you not croak") is a softened form of geberesice ("may you croak"). The same tendency is seen in Amasya: instead of "May God take your life" people say "May God not take your life", and sayings such as "May his eye not be put out" and "May his hearth not go out" express anger while deliberately emptying the ill wish of its force. According to Demirelma's findings, when the person cursed is important or beloved, the negative meaning of the sentence is retained but the sentence is turned into the negative form, so that the ill wish is softened. The word andır, recorded from Merzifon in the Derleme Sözlüğü, serves a similar function: it is used in place of an imprecation against people and animals, in the sense of "may you be left without an owner".

Whether a Curse Takes Hold, and the Power of Words

Because people believe that a curse will take effect, cursing is regarded as a dangerous path of speech. According to the belief recorded in Amasya, a curse uttered by someone who has been wronged finds its mark if that person's heart is pure. A father's curse is believed to take effect, whereas a mother's is thought not to, because her milk prevents it. For this reason people say that one must beware of the curse of the wronged and of the father. This belief also accords with traditions in Islam. The Prophet is reported to have said, when sending Mu'adh ibn Jabal to Yemen as governor, "Beware the curse of the wronged, for there is no veil between it and God"; other hadiths likewise state that a father's prayer concerning his child and the curse of the wronged are answered.

Nevertheless, cursing is frowned upon in Amasya, both from a religious standpoint and by custom. Islamic scholars have stated that Muslims cursing one another for trivial reasons is incompatible with Islamic ethics, and have emphasised the superiority of forgiveness and patience. The informants who took part in the study likewise see cursing mostly as a means of defence resorted to by people who cannot stand up for themselves, who lack the strength, and who have suffered injustice. The same people say that patience and forgiveness are a virtuous stance, that the one who curses in fact harms themselves too, and they counsel that the tongue should not be accustomed to cursing. The popular belief that a curse also affects the one who utters it is another reason why curses are not readily spoken.

Faith in the power of words also shows itself in the everyday practices of Amasya. A person with a sore in the mouth or on the tongue says three times to someone younger, "A mole has fallen on my tongue"; the other answers three times, "Spit on the ground", and it is believed that the sore will thus heal quickly. Someone who wishes to own a house calls down the chimney of a newly built house that has never been lived in, "O God, give me a house too, let me have a home of my own." The local idiom "An unplayable saz, an unheeded word" describes a person who goes their own way and will not listen to advice, while reminding the hearer that words, like the saz, have their proper place and time. In these practices blessing and curse appear as spoken acts, uttered to particular people in particular situations and expected to have their effect.

The Conversational Genres Today

Riddle, rhyme, blessing and curse, though distinct genres, are parts of the same world of words. Many riddles are recited to the rhythm of rhymes; the children's rain and crocus rhymes end in benediction and imprecation; and tale preambles close with words that warn the inattentive listener with a half-joking curse. This interweaving shows that oral culture does not separate its genres by firm boundaries, and that each can pass into another in the flow of conversation. These sayings are also a mirror of values, reflecting what a community holds sacred and what it disapproves of: in the blessings of Amasya hospitality, sharing, independence from others and family ties come to the fore, while the subjects of the curses are most often injustice, lies, gossip and the breaking of one's word.

As ways of life have changed, the room gatherings of long winter nights have grown rare, and the habits of posing riddles and of choosing who is "it" in the street with a counting-out rhyme have lost their former vigour; the fact that projects are run in schools to reintroduce children's games is itself a sign of this retreat. Blessings and curses are more resilient. The informants of the study say they heard these sayings from the people around them, and blessings such as "Health to your hands", "May God be pleased with you" and "May your road be open" are still spoken every day in Amasya. Collecting work stretching from the word-compilation campaign of the 1930s to the blessings and curses recorded in 2025 has made a portion of these unwritten sayings permanent. In the riddles, rhymes and blessings of Amasya, the wit, the good humour and the inner world of a city are kept together.

Chronology

11th century: In the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk of Mahmud of Kashgar, alkış is recorded in the sense of "praying, praising" and kargış in the sense of "curse, malediction, imprecation"; the work also contains the first written examples of the tekerleme.

1839: With the proclamation of the Tanzimat, the custom of acclaiming the viziers is abolished in Ottoman ceremonial; acclamations of the sultan continue until the abolition of the sultanate.

1932: On 12 July the Word Compilation Regulation is drawn up; compilation committees are formed in every province and the collection of words from the dialects of Anatolia begins.

1939: The first volume of Türkiye'de Halk Ağzından Söz Derleme Dergisi is published.

1962–1979: The twelve-volume Derleme Sözlüğü, based on some six hundred thousand slips, is prepared; alkış (1963, vol. I) and kargış (vol. VIII) are entered in this dictionary.

2017: At the International Amasya Symposium held in Amasya on 4–7 October, a paper is presented on the distribution of Amasya words in the Derleme Sözlüğü.

2022: In the Amasya special issue of the Amasya University Journal of Social Sciences, Kürşat Efe classifies the Amasya vocabulary in the Derleme Sözlüğü by semantic field; children's game words are grouped under a separate heading.

2025: In June, blessings and curses of Amasya are collected through interviews with informants born in Suluova and Merzifon; the study is published under the name of Betül Demirelma.

2026: In June a ceremony is held in Merzifon under the Traditional Children's Games Project, and the final of the game of tombik is played.

Bibliography

Academic studies

  • Efe, Kürşat, "Derleme Sözlüğü'ne Göre Amasya Söz Varlığının Sözlük Bilimsel ve Ad Bilimsel Sınıflandırılması", Amasya Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi (ASOBİD), Amasya Special Issue, 2022, pp. 215-285.

Books

  • Demirelma, Betül, "Amasya'da Sözlü Halk Kültürünün Bir Parçası Olarak Dua ve Beddua Pratikleri", Özgür Yayınları, 2025, pp. 65-84 (doi: 10.58830/ozgur.pub792.c3345). ozguryayinlari.com

Other sources

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  • Çağrıcı, Mustafa, "Beddua", TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, vol. 5, Istanbul 1992, pp. 297-298. islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
  • Boratav, Pertev Naili, 100 Soruda Türk Halk Edebiyatı, Istanbul 1995 (cited after Demirelma).
  • Elçin, Şükrü, Halk Edebiyatına Giriş, Ankara 2005 (cited after Demirelma).
  • "Tekerleme" and "Bilmece" articles, Turkish Wikipedia (auxiliary source).
  • "Amasya'da Kültür Sanat" compilation: riddles, idioms, folk beliefs and rain-prayer customs of Amasya (Türkiye Outdoor).
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  • "Unutulan Çocuk Oyunları Amasya'da Yeniden Canlandı", Objektif Amasya, 11 June 2026.

Online sources