Kazım Aygül sang this deyiş, which opens with the line "Ben de şu dünyaya geldim geleli", for the conservatory team in Gümüşhacıköy on 9 July 1943. The catalogue adds the note "from Pir Sultan Abdal" to the title in square brackets. Neither the notation nor the words of the Gümüşhacıköy recording have been published; on the other hand, a Pir Sultan deyiş opening with the same line appears in the TRT repertoire in a variant collected in the Ladik district of Samsun.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: Gümüşhacıköy
  • Source person: Kazım Aygül (in the list of performers, from Gümüşhacıköy, a farmer)
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 9 July 1943
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1136/A-1; no. 3716 in Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: deyiş (Alevi-Bektashi devotional song)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded for the Gümüşhacıköy recording
  • Words: Pir Sultan Abdal (the addition in the catalogue title); music anonymous
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the recording's details are in Kaya's catalogue, and the details and words of the Ladik variant on Repertükül (TRT 4858)

Lyrics

The single line that survives from the Gümüşhacıköy recording is this:

Ben de şu dünyaya geldim geleli

The quatrains Kazım Aygül sang never reached print, because Kaya's catalogue does not reproduce the words on the cards. Their written form remains on the card copy kept by TRT, and Aygül's voice on the disc in the Folklore Archive. The cataloguer states that where the card's title gave no poet's name, he added it himself from the pen name in the words. The bracketed note "from Pir Sultan Abdal" is very probably such an addition, which suggests that Pir Sultan's pen name appears in the last quatrain; since the catalogue does not mark these additions one by one, nothing certain can be said.

Collections and Variants

Deyiş no. 4858 in the TRT repertoire begins "Ben de bu dünyaya geldim geleli"; its source person is Hüseyin Akçam of Ladik, and it was collected and notated by Ümit Bekizağa. Its words in the repertoire are as follows:

Ben de bu dünyaya geldim geleli
Emaneten bir don giymişe döndüm
Sahibi varımış elimden aldı
Kuru yerde koyun yaymışa döndüm
O yar geldi geçti geri bakmadı
Hendekler kazdırdım sular akmadı
Çok yuva bekledim cücük çıkmadı
Boş yuva beklemiş yoz kuşa döndüm
Pir Sultan Abdal'ım bu dünya fani
Baştan başa kim sürdü bu devranı
Yarin bir çift sözü üşüttü beni
Yüce dağ başında buymuşa döndüm

The poem likens a lifetime in this world to a garment held in trust: its owner came and took it back, and the speaker has become like a shepherd grazing sheep on bare, dry ground. In the second quatrain "cücük" is a fledgling and "yoz kuş" a barren bird whose eggs never hatch; the nest waited on in vain stands for a life spent in vain. "Buymak" in the last quatrain means to be chilled through, to freeze to death, and the line says that a single word from the beloved has left the speaker frozen on a mountain top. Whether the Ladik variant and the Gümüşhacıköy recording carry the same melody is unknown; what they share is the first line and the poet's name in the catalogue. The difference between "şu" and "bu" in the opening words may come from the card being written down by ear, or from a difference between the two local dialects.

Story

No published record could be found that tells how the deyiş reached Gümüşhacıköy or from whom Kazım Aygül learned it. Among the other pieces Aygül sang that day were a Kırklar zamahı, a güzelleme by Kul Hüseyin and an elegy; the minstrel and cem traditions clearly weigh heavily in his repertoire.

Musical Features

The mode and metre of the Gümüşhacıköy recording are unknown. The notation of the Ladik variant is in the Hüseynî scale and in 5/8 time; its tonic and final note are La, and its range is nine notes. These details describe only the Ladik collection and cannot be transferred to Aygül's melody.

Performers and Recordings

Two of Kazım Aygül's recordings from that day passed into the TRT repertoire: Meryem Suya Gidiyor and Yazı Yazdım Sokuya; the Gümüşhacıköy form of this deyiş, by contrast, is documented only on the 1943 disc. The general background of Amasya's folk songs, deyiş and long songs is set out in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources