Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Ey aġalar ben bugün pür ayıldım
Ṭaġ başına ṭuman ne güzel uymuş
Şükür olsun ol yaradan Ḫüdâya
Îmân dîn İslâma ne güzel uymuş

In English

1. O gentlemen, today I have fully come to my senses (woken and come to myself): how well the mist suits the mountain top. Thanks be to God who created us; how well faith and religion suit Islam. ("Pür ayıldım" is the article's reading; it has been understood as "I have fully come to my senses", and the reading "bir ayıldım" (once I came to my senses) is also possible.)

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a koşma. The koşma is the most common verse form of minstrel poetry; it is built of quatrains and usually sung in an eleven-syllable metre. The lines of this quatrain are also of eleven syllables; the syllable count is ours. The second and fourth lines end with the refrain (redif) "ne güzel uymuş"; the rhyme rests on a weak similarity of sound in the words "ṭuman" and "İslâma" before the refrain. "Ayıldım / Hüdâya" in the first and third lines do not rhyme; such freedom in the first quatrain is found in folk poetry. Because Hakverdioğlu's article gives only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we have only this quatrain; the last quatrain, in which the minstrel speaks his pen name, has not been published. When and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain opens in the language of the minstrel gathering. The address "Ey ağalar" (O gentlemen) shows that the minstrel directs his words to the listeners, the notables of the gathering; it is an opening minstrels often used in coffeehouse and mansion gatherings. With "bugün pür ayıldım" the minstrel describes an awakening: this can be read both as rising from sleep in the morning and as coming to one's senses, waking from the sleep of heedlessness. The awakened minstrel's eye turns first to nature, to the mist settled on the mountain top; the refrain "ne güzel uymuş" says that this view is in its proper place, exactly as it should be. In the third and fourth lines the same refrain is tied this time to faith: the minstrel who gives thanks to the Creator says how well faith and religion suit Islam. Thus a single refrain brings together harmony in nature and harmony in belief within the same sentence pattern. The plain diction of the quatrain is a typical example of the minstrel manner, which rests more on the naturalness of speech than on ornament.

Historical Context

The quatrain is on page 80 of the Merzifon Cönkü, introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019, and was published on page 555 of the article. Âşık Deli's name has not been found in any other source; Hakverdioğlu, too, gives no information about the poet. The full text of the poem exists only in the cönk itself and has not been published. For what is known about the minstrel and the cönk, see the page on Âşık Deli.

Bibliography

Online sources