A young man on horseback asks a girl at the spring for water and she refuses; he pleads, then threatens her with pistol and sword, and still she will not hand him her bowl. Recorded on disc from Hüseyin Onkar by the Ankara State Conservatory team in Merzifon on 7 July 1943, and linked in the repertoire data to the village of Hayrettin, the song is a sung exchange from beginning to end. In the notation the stanzas are headed "Erkek" (man) and "Kadın" (woman); in the team's list it was entered as "Bir Kız ile Bir Oğlan", "A Girl and a Boy". Ateş Köyoğlu's notation bears the number 1899 in the TRT repertoire. It appears that one source performer sang both voices, since the catalogue data give only "source performer" as performer.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: TRT THM 1899, kırık hava
  • Region: Amasya, Merzifon, Hayrettin village
  • Source performer: Hüseyin Onkar
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory
  • Collection date: 7 July 1943; title in the conservatory list "Bir Kız ile Bir Oğlan", disc 1120/A-2
  • Transcribed by: Ateş Köyoğlu
  • Mode: Hüseynî scale; final and closing note La
  • Metre: 5/8
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • TRT link: TRT repertoire no. 1899. As there is no official TRT page for the work, the catalogue data and lyrics are given from Repertükül.

Lyrics

Erkek:
Ben de çıktım Fodullu'nun üstüne (ey)
Şahin gibi oturmuşdu postuna (ey)
Guşluk meheller punar üstüne (ey)
Bir su gönder gız tasınan tasınan
Kadın:
Var git oğlan var git deli olmuşsun
Deli değil sen meylini bulmuşsun
El sözüne uymuş buraya gelmişsin
Canım çıksa suyu vermem tasınan
Erkek:
Çoktan beri at üstünde dururum (ey)
Ya suyu alır ya burda ölürüm (ey)
Çeker seni gubur'unan vururum (ey)
Bir su gönder gız tasınan
Kadın:
Hiç bu emanete hile olur mu
Dost olan dost gusuruna galur mu
Oğlan çal bakalım gubur alır mı
Canım çıksa suyu vermem tasınan
Erkek:
Acı demem ben bu sudan içerim (ey)
Tükmen olur yaylalara göçerim (ey)
Gız seni şimdi palaynan biçerim (ey)
Bir su gönder gız tasınan
Kadın:
Terzi olan türlü biçer libayı
Oğlan başıma da yığdın obayı
Su yerine şimdi içersin ağıyı
Canım çıksa suyu vermem tasınan

The exchange is sung in the local dialect, and some words open up only with the word list printed with the score: "mehel" is place, "meylini bulmak" finding one's beloved, "gubur" a kind of pistol, "liba" garment. The rest are local forms of familiar words: "tasınan" means with a bowl, "guşluk" the mid-morning hour, "punar" spring, "gusur" fault, "tükmen" Turkmen and "ağı" poison. In the first stanza the young man says he climbed up onto the place called Fodullu, where the girl sat on her fleece like a falcon, and that it is mid-morning at the spring; he asks for a bowl of water. The girl sends him away: you have gone mad; no, you are not mad, you have found someone to lose your heart to; you listened to other people's talk and came here, and even if it kills me I will not give you water in a bowl.

The exchange grows harsher as it goes. The young man says he will either get the water or die there, and if need be shoot the girl with his pistol; she reminds him that a trust allows no trickery and a true friend does not take offence, then mocks him: go on, fire, let us see if your pistol goes off. In the last pair he says he will drink the water however bitter, become a Turkmen and move up to the summer pastures, cut the girl down with his sword. Her answer is the sharpest point of the song: a tailor cuts cloth in many ways; you have gathered the whole camp around my head; now instead of water you will drink poison. The idiom "başıma obayı yığmak" can be understood as the young man's uproar having drawn everyone to them; the source does not explain it.

Story

Where Fodullu lies is unknown, and so is whether the song grew out of a real event; the publications consulted answer neither question. The title on the collection slip, "Bir Kız ile Bir Oğlan", suggests that locally the piece was known less as the story of particular people than as an exchange between a nameless girl and boy. No names occur in the words; the speakers are called only "oğlan" and "gız".

Musical Features

The Hüseynî melody comes down to La and ends there, roaming a full octave from the lower La to the upper. The metre is 5/8. In Nail Demircioğlu's table of Amasya's 48 TRT songs there are five works in 5/8, and two of them, this song and the deyiş numbered 1900 that follows it, were collected on the same day from the same source performer.

The way the notation is written shows that the two voices also differ in the melody. In the young man's stanzas the exclamation "ey" is added to the end of the first three lines and the stanza closes on the refrain "Bir su gönder gız tasınan". The girl's stanzas lack the exclamation, and their closing line is "Canım çıksa suyu vermem tasınan". So the same tune returns with two different endings, and the listener knows from the refrain who is speaking. The first three lines of each stanza rhyme with one another and the fourth leads into the refrain; the measure is eleven syllables.

Performers and Recordings

The performer field of the catalogue data names only the source performer, and no audio file has been added to the online entry; the one known performance is Onkar's 1943 disc. On the same day in Merzifon Onkar also sang the deyiş "Eğlen Sana Bir Nasihat Edeyim", associated with the names of Sümmânî and Karacaoğlan, which became TRT no. 1900. Nothing documents that the song was later sung onto a disc or taken into an album.

Collections and Variants

The conservatory catalogue gives the first line as "Ben de çıḳdım Fodullunun üstüne"; the place of recording is Merzifon in square brackets, that is, the cataloguer's inference. As the team spent 7 and 8 July in Merzifon, the inference fits the itinerary. The repertoire data, for their part, give the name of Hayrettin village together with the district. Haluk Yücel's 2018 survey counts the song among the kırık havas as "Bende çıkdım Fodullu'nun üstüne ey (Merzifon)". It is not known whether the song was ever collected elsewhere or sung with altered words. Amasya's sung exchanges, laments and dance tunes can be seen together in The Melody of the Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources