The line "Uzun olur Amasya'nın selvisi", "tall are the cypresses of Amasya", ties this song to Amasya through its words as well as its catalogue entry. The lover waiting before a bolted door describes black hair braided with gold thread, a sweetheart who learned her good manners from her mother, and his confusion among the cypresses, unable to tell which of them is his beloved. It stands in the TRT repertoire as no. 2135, in the form collected and written down by Yücel Paşmakçı from Saadettin Sümbül. The date of collection is not given in the catalogue data. The melody, in the Karcığar scale, has its final on La yet ends on Re, and moves in a metre formed by joining bars of 4/4 and 6/4.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: TRT THM 2135, kırık hava
  • Region: Amasya
  • Source performer: Saadettin Sümbül
  • Collected by: Yücel Paşmakçı
  • Collection date: not in the catalogue data; not found in the sources consulted
  • Transcribed by: Yücel Paşmakçı
  • Mode: Karcığar scale; final La, closing note Re
  • Metre: 4/4+6/4 in the repertoire data; Demircioğlu gives only 4/4
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • TRT link: TRT repertoire no. 2135; as TRT has no official page for individual works, the catalogue data and lyrics are on Repertükül
  • Ministry of Culture and Tourism audio: listed by the Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism as "Evlerine Vardım", listen
  • Other: the lyrics and source performer also appear on Türkü Yurdu

Lyrics

Evlerine vardım kapı sürgülü
Siyah saçlar sırma ile örgülü (a leylim bir tanem gel gel)
Benim yarim annesinden görgülü
Hadi yosmam beyhude cilvelenme (a leylim bir tanem gel gel)
Uzun olur Amasya'nın selvisi
Ben de bilmem benim yarim hangisi (a leylim bir tanem gel gel)
İnce belli fidan boylu kendisi
Hadi yosmam beyhude cilvelenme (a leylim bir tanem gel gel)

The bolted door tells us the lover was not let in, but the quatrain does not turn this into a complaint; the praise and teasing that follow keep the reproach light. Roughly, it says: I went to my love's house, the door was bolted; her black hair was braided with gold thread. My sweetheart learned her manners and breeding from her mother; come now, my beauty, do not flirt in vain. The only word the notation's glossary explains is "beyhude" (in vain). "Yosma", for its part, is a teasing name for the beloved, meaning a graceful, coquettish beauty.

In the second quatrain the image turns to the city. The cypresses of Amasya are tall, and the lover cannot tell which of them is his own sweetheart; she too is slim-waisted, tall as a sapling. The beloved's stature is likened to a cypress, but the comparison is never stated outright; two lines are set side by side and the reader is left to join them. Both quatrains close with the same line, "Hadi yosmam beyhude cilvelenme", which together with the cry "a leylim bir tanem gel gel", "my Leyla, my only one, come, come", does the work of the song's refrain.

Story

The catalogue data do not show when or where the song was collected. Who Saadettin Sümbül was and where he learned the song are not told in the sources consulted, and no account of how the song came to be made could be traced.

Musical Features

What strikes one first in this melody is that its final and its closing note differ. According to the repertoire data the melody has its final on La but ends on Re. Set the catalogue entries of Amasya's 48 kırık havas side by side and thirty-three turn out to end on La; only three end on Re, and this is one of them. Lowest and highest notes are both given as Sol, a range of eight notes. The scale is Karcığar, and according to Nail Demircioğlu's table seven of Amasya's TRT songs are in this scale.

The metre is written differently in the two sources. The repertoire data give a compound "4/4+6/4"; bars of four and six beats follow one another in the melody. Demircioğlu, however, gives only the main metre, 4/4. Haluk Yücel's 2018 table places the song with the kırık havas under the title "Evlerine vardım kapı sürgülü".

Performers and Recordings

No performer is named in the repertoire data, and the online entry has no audio file. The way to hear the song is the recording titled "Evlerine Vardım" published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Amasya directorate; the singer is not named there either. Yücel Paşmakçı's name appears as collector and transcriber in the catalogue data of another song of the Amasya repertoire as well, "Halay Çekin Düzülsün" (TRT 52), collected from Hanife Karabıyık. Nor do the sources searched mention any disc or album recording.

Collections and Variants

An online folk-song archive gives the song under the same source performer's name and with the same two quatrains; it parts company only in the cry, which is written there as "(a leylim bir tanem gel)" with a single "gel", and set on a line of its own. Beyond this, neither another collection nor a variant with different words could be found. In the general survey of Amasya's melodies, the article The Melody of the Yeşilırmak, this song is among the examples cited with the name of its source performer, Saadettin Sümbül.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources