The name written on the card as "Bilbil" is the Merzifon pronunciation of bülbül, the nightingale. This deyiş, sung by Aşir Kirpiksiz for the conservatory team on 8 July 1943, opens with a line addressed to a nightingale whose rose has withered: "Mehrican mı değdi gülün soldurdu". The rest of the words and the notation of the melody have not been published; what we have is the catalogue entry and this single line.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not registered under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire
  • Place of collection: Merzifon (in square brackets in the catalogue, presumed)
  • Source person: Aşir Kirpiksiz
  • Collected by: the Ankara State Conservatory team: Halil Bedii Yönetken, Muzaffer Sarısözen and the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Date of collection: 8 July 1943
  • Location in the archive: Folklore Archive, disc 1125/A-2; no. 3672 in Kaya's catalogue
  • Genre: deyiş (devotional song)
  • Mode, rhythm: not recorded
  • Words and music: anonymous (the catalogue added no poet's name to the title)
  • Source link: there is no TRT page; the details are in Kaya's catalogue

Lyrics

Mehrican mı değdi gülün soldurdu

"Mehrican" is the mihrican of the old poetic language and denotes autumn, the season of fading. The line asks the nightingale, or perhaps the lover himself in the guise of a nightingale: "Was it the autumn wind that touched your rose and withered it?" In folk poetry the nightingale and the rose are the familiar counterparts of lover and beloved; a withered rose may point to a lost beloved or to death, but which it is could only be understood from the rest of the deyiş. Since only first lines were taken into Kaya's list, the question stays open. If the whole deyiş was written on the card, it is in the copy kept by TRT; Kirpiksiz's voice is on the disc in the Folklore Archive.

Story

No poet's name appears in the title of Bilbil, and there is no published information on whom the deyiş belongs to or how it came to be sung. The catalogue says that when it found a pen name, it added the poet's name to the title; there is no such addition here, which may indicate either that the words on the card were not written down as far as the quatrain with the pen name, or that the deyiş has no pen name.

Musical Features

The recording is second on side A of disc 1125; the first piece on that side is Kirpiksiz's deyiş "İptida Dünyaya". The catalogue notes that the card of that recording states a violin was played and that the violinist must have been Rasim Olgun or Turabi Tanrısever; the entry for Bilbil, by contrast, names Kirpiksiz alone. The mode and metre of the deyiş are also unknown.

Performers and Recordings

The titles of the other pieces Aşir Kirpiksiz sang for the team in Merzifon ("Geyik Avı", "On Sekiz Bin Âlem", "İptida Dünyaya", "Dik Delil Makamı") show that most of his repertoire consisted of Sufi order modes and deyiş; Bilbil itself is known only from his 1943 disc. For the melodic tradition of Merzifon and of Amasya as a whole: The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources