A young man climbs up to the summer pasture camp and falls for a gazelle-eyed beauty. "Çıktım Yaylaları Gezdim" is a short song made of two three-line stanzas with a two-line refrain between them; Nida Tüfekçi collected and wrote it down from Feryadi Hafız Hakkı Efendi, and it took its place in the repertoire as TRT no. 2266. Neither the date nor the place of collection is given in the catalogue data. The melody, in the Hüseynî scale, moves in an asymmetrical 9/8 and within a range of nine notes. What is available about it amounts to these catalogue data and the words.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: TRT THM 2266, kırık hava
  • Region: Amasya
  • Source performer: Feryadi Hafız Hakkı Efendi
  • Collected by: Nida Tüfekçi
  • Collection date: not in the catalogue data; not found in the sources consulted
  • Transcribed by: Nida Tüfekçi
  • Mode: Hüseynî scale; final and closing note La
  • Metre: 9/8
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • TRT link: TRT repertoire no. 2266; as there is no official TRT page, the catalogue data and lyrics are on Repertükül
  • Other: lyrics and source performer on Türkü Yurdu

Lyrics

Çıktım yaylaları gezdim
Lalelerden mercan dizdim
Ben o gülden çoktan bezdim
Bağlantı:
Yandım dolana fırlana
Gülüm serhoş ben divana
Çıktım yayla obasına
Düştüm ahu sevdasına
Yandım yarın edasına
(Bağlantı)

I went up and wandered the summer pastures; I strung coral beads from tulips; I have long since tired of that rose: so the first stanza reads in plain English. Refrain: I burned, turning round and round; my rose is drunk, I am out of my mind. In the second stanza the singer says he went up to the pasture camp, fell in love with a gazelle-eyed beauty and burned for his sweetheart's grace. "Bezmek" (to grow weary, tired of), "ahu" (gazelle) and "divana" (crazed, mad, divane) are glossed on the score; "dolana fırlana" is not, and it can be read as circling and spinning, that is, turning endlessly in love.

There is a quiet contradiction in the words. The first stanza ends "I have long since tired of that rose", while the refrain that follows says "my rose is drunk, I am out of my mind". The two lines may describe two different loves, an old one left behind and a new one found in the pastures; the gazelle of the second stanza supports this reading. The text does not say so outright. The lines have eight syllables and each stanza rhymes within itself (gezdim, dizdim, bezdim; obasına, sevdasına, edasına).

Story

The life of Feryadi Hafız Hakkı Efendi, his connection with Amasya and from whom he learned the song are absent from the sources consulted; whether the "Feryadi" at the head of his name is a nickname or a pen name is not explained either. No tradition about the song's origin seems to have been put on record.

Musical Features

The catalogue entry gives the scale as Hüseynî. The melody rests on La and closes on La, using nine notes from Sol to the La an octave above. The metre is 9/8. In Nail Demircioğlu's table of Amasya's 48 TRT songs there are nine works in 9/8, and this song is one of them. Haluk Yücel's 2018 list, too, places it among the kırık havas as "Çıktım yaylaları gezdim".

Performers and Recordings

The performer field of the catalogue data has been left empty. No recording of the song could be traced, whether in the source performer's voice or by a later artist, and the online entry has no audio file.

Collections and Variants

On one folk-song website the words match the repertoire, the only difference being that the refrain is written out after each stanza. The same site shows Feryadi Hafız Hakkı as source performer of three more songs, all from Erzurum: "Gülistanda Bir Gülüm Var", "Giderem Men Tebriz'e" and "Kaçma Benden Güzel Çoban". This suggests a performer who knew the songs of more than one region; where and from whom he learned the Amasya song, however, is not known. No collection other than Tüfekçi's is known either. For Amasya's other melodies, see The Melody of the Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources