Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: eleven-syllable syllabic metre (first line 12 syllables)

Fedayi'nin her yeri methetmektir huyu
Şehrimiz Amasya Ebemü köyü
Baharda şenlenir dereler suyu
Coşkun coşkun akar seli Dive'nin

In English

1. It is Fedâî's habit to praise every place; our town is Amasya, our village Ebemü. In spring the waters of the streams rejoice, and the flood of Dive rushes on in spate.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The quatrain is taken from a poem on page 184 of the divan and can be read today only in the quotation in Cafer Özdemir's article. The lines are in the eleven-syllable metre; only the first line, which carries the pen name, has twelve syllables. The rhyme "huyu, köyü, suyu" links the first three lines, and the fourth line ends with the word "Dive'nin" (of Dive). This arrangement matches the structure of the final quatrains of a koşma, and the presence of the pen name here suggests that the fragment is the last quatrain of the poem; this is an inference. Since Özdemir states that he corrected the spelling in his quotations, the spelling of the text may differ from that of the divan.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The poet first states his own habit: to praise every place he sees. This confirms that he was an itinerant minstrel who carried the villages and towns he visited into his poetry. Then, amid all this praise, he names his own place: his town Amasya, his village Ebemü. Ebemü is the old name of Yassıçal, the village where the poet was born; Özdemir, too, records his birthplace as "Yassıçal (Ebemü) Köyü". In the last two lines the words turn to a landscape. The swelling streams of spring and the rushing flood tell of a village rich in water; the doubled "coşkun coşkun" conveys the speed and sound of the flow. The source does not explain what the name Dive refers to; it is probably the name of a stream or a locality near the village.

Özdemir quotes this quatrain together with the one beginning "Amasya vatan ilimiz" to show that the poet names both his province and his native village in his own poetry. These lines thus become one of the clearest testimonies to Fedâî Baba's attachment to Amasya.

Bibliography

  • Cafer Özdemir, "Hak Âşığı Amasyalı Fedâî Baba ve Tasavvuf Kültürü", Türk Kültürü ve Hacı Bektaş Velî Araştırma Dergisi, 83, 2017, pp. 125-148 (quatrain: pp. 127-128). https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/tkhcbva/issue/71937/1157386
  • Abdullah Çelebi, Amasya'lı Fedayi Baba Divanı, Istanbul: Can Yayınları, 1991, p. 184 (cited from Özdemir 2017).

Online sources