Collected in the village of Akpınar in Gümüşhacıköy, "Bana Cevreyleyip Geyip Dokunma" ("Do Not Torment Me and Wound Me") is a short song reproaching a coquettish beloved: "do not wear thorns in place of roses." Its language mixes the local idiom with the vocabulary of divan poetry: "cevreylemek" (to torment), "ab-ı hayat" (the water of life), "gonca gül" (rosebud) and "has bahçe" (the private garden) come together within a few lines. After every two lines a refrain is sung: "Ağam da gel gel, paşam da gel gel, gülüm de gel gel gel" ("Come, my lord, come; come, my pasha, come; come, my rose, come"). Its number in the TRT repertoire is 949, and it was collected and transcribed by Muzaffer Sarısözen. A correction stating that parts of the lyrics in the score were written down wrongly is also on record. A general assessment of the song alongside Amasya's other melodies in the TRT repertoire is found in The Melody of the Yeşilırmak.

Catalogue Record

  • TRT Turkish Folk Music repertoire no.: 949, kırık hava
  • Region: Amasya, Gümüşhacıköy, Akpınar village
  • Source performers: Bektaş Yıldız, Aşur Ceylan
  • Collected and transcribed by: Muzaffer Sarısözen
  • Date of collection: unknown; Kaya's comparison table likewise gives no date and no matching conservatory index card
  • Makam: Uşşak; final and closing note A
  • Usul (metre): 2/4
  • Range: from A to F, 6 notes
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • TRT link: as there is no official TRT page, Repertükül for the score's record, https://www.repertukul.com/BANA-CEVREYLEYIP-GEYIP-DOKUNMA-949
  • Türkü Yurdu: https://www.turkuyurdu.com/bana-cevreyleyip-164.html

Lyrics

The lyrics in the repertoire score consist of four two-line stanzas and a three-line refrain repeated after each stanza:

Bana cevreyleyip geyip dokunma
Naz ederken hatırıma dokunma
Ağam da gel gel
Paşam da gel gel
Gülüm de gel gel gel
Gül yerine dikenleri sokunma
Sana hasbahçada gonca güller var
Neylersin de elin gülün ararsın
Sana hasbahçada gonca güller var
Eğilip de serçeşme'den su içme
Sana ab-ı hayat bunca güller var

In English: Do not torment me, and while you play coy do not wound my heart. Do not wear thorns in place of roses; there are rosebuds in your own private garden. Why seek a stranger's rose? There are rosebuds in your own private garden. Do not bend to drink from every fountain; there is so much water of life for you.

The glossary that accompanies the score explains "cevreylemek" as to distress, to cause trouble, and "ab-ı hayat" as the water that gives eternal life, the "bengisu". "Has bahçe" is an old expression meaning the sultan's private garden; here it is used for the beloved's own garden, that is, the beloved's own beauty. "Geyip" is the local form of "giyip", having put on.

Errors in the Lyrics and Mehmet Özbek's Correction

Beneath the lyrics of the score, Repertükül adds an observation by Mehmet Özbek: the song's words contain faulty passages that distort the meaning. According to Özbek, the first line should not be "Bana cevreyleyip geyip dokunma" but "Bana cevreyleyip geyip dökünme"; and the line "Eğilip de serçeşme'den su içme" in the last stanza should read "Eğilip de her çeşme'den su içme" (do not bend to drink from every fountain). If "geyip dökünmek" is read as to dress up and adorn oneself, the first line becomes a reproach forbidding the beloved to preen and play coy, and it is spared from repeating the rhyme word of the following "hatırıma dokunma". In the last stanza, "do not drink from every fountain" arrives at the same point as "do not seek a stranger's rose" in the other stanzas: do not turn to others, what you have is enough. Özbek's reasoning is not given separately on Repertükül.

Its Story

No account of the song's composition gathered in the Gümüşhacıköy area has been published, and the sources do not touch on its story.

Musical Features

Demircioğlu singles out eight of the 48 Amasya songs in the TRT repertoire as being of uşşak character and examines them separately; "Bana Cevreyleyip Geyip Dokunma" is one of these eight. According to his analysis the song's final note is A, its metre 2/4, its lowest note A and its highest F; its range is six notes, and G, the leading note (yeden) of the uşşak makam, is not used. Demircioğlu's general finding for this group is that none of Amasya's uşşak songs uses all the notes of the uşşak scale, and that the melodies stay within a span of four, five or six notes above the final. The leading note appears in only two of the eight songs. With its six-note span rising from A to F, this song is among the widest-ranging examples in the group.

In metre, too, it belongs to a minority. By Demircioğlu's count, 62.5 per cent of Amasya's uşşak songs are in 4/4; only two are in 2/4, and this is one of them. In Haluk Yücel's 2018 study of Amasya folk songs the work appears as "Bana cevreyleyip, geyip dokunma (Gümüşhacıköy)".

Source Performers

Bektaş Yıldız's name also appears in the recordings made in Gümüşhacıköy by the Ankara State Conservatory's collecting team in the summer of 1943. The team, made up of Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and Rıza Yetişen, worked in Gümüşhacıköy on 9 July 1943 and recorded eight pieces from Bektaş Yıldız, among them "Fadimem", "Tohadın Mezerliği", "Karadağ Üstüne Ismarladım", a divan, a güzelleme and a Kırklar semah. "Bana Cevreyleyip" is not among these recordings in Celal Volkan Kaya's catalogue, and the catalogue's comparison table with the TRT repertoire shows no matching index card for score no. 949. When and in what setting the song reached Sarısözen is therefore unknown. The sources give no information on Aşur Ceylan.

Collections and Variants

The text published on Türkü Yurdu differs from the repertoire at two points. There one reads "dikenleri takınma" for "dikenleri sokunma", and in the last line "bunca göller var" (so many lakes) for "bunca güller var" (so many roses); "hasbahçada" is also spelled "has bahçede". The reading "göller" fits better with the fountain and the water of life in the same line, but which was the original wording in the collection cannot be known.

Performers and Recordings

The performer field of the Repertükül record is blank, and the page has no audio file. The song was not included in the Amasya series issued by the provincial directorate either. No artist documented as having sung it, and no disc, has been traced.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources