Side A of disc 1118 holds a single piece: "Geyik Avı" (The Deer Hunt), the first deyiş the minstrel Aşir Kirpiksiz sang when he stood before the conservatory team in Merzifon on 8 July 1943. The first line written on the card is "Hay etdiler al gınalı dağlardan". Nothing after that line has been published in any work, nor has the notation of the melody; the deyiş is not listed under the Amasya region in the TRT repertoire.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none
  • Place and date of collection: Merzifon, 8 July 1943 (both written clearly on the card)
  • Source person: Aşir Kirpiksiz; minstrel (âşık), from the village of Karamağra in Merzifon, year of birth on the card 1326 in the Rumi calendar (1910-1911); in the list of performers his instrument is given in square brackets as saz
  • Collected by: Halil Bedii Yönetken and Muzaffer Sarısözen; the recording onto disc was done by the technician Rıza Yetişen
  • Genre: deyiş (devotional song)
  • Mode, rhythm: unknown
  • Words and music: recorded as anonymous
  • Source publication and archive: Kaya's catalogue, no. 3644; Folklore Archive of the former Ankara State Conservatory, disc 1118/A
  • Link: the catalogue thesis, İTÜ Polen; there is no TRT page

Lyrics

The first line on the card, in the collectors' spelling that keeps the features of the local dialect, is this:

Hay etdiler al gınalı dağlardan

"Hay etmek" means to shout and startle, to chase off with cries; "al gınalı" is "al kınalı", red-hennaed. The line can be read as "They startled the red-hennaed one from the mountains with their cries". Who the red-hennaed one is cannot be drawn from a single line: since the title speaks of a hunt, it may be the startled deer, but the same epithet can also describe a beauty, and only the rest of the text would show whether the deyiş later turns to a beloved or to a young hero. Because Kaya did not carry the words on the cards into his catalogue, the rest of the deyiş most probably survives on the TRT copy of the card.

Story

The deer hunt is a title the conservatory archive meets more than once: a "Geyik Avı Destanı" beginning "Ben de giderim geyik avına" in Malatya in 1938, a "Geyik Avı" with the line "Ben de gittim bir geyiğin avına" in Urfa the same summer, a "Seher Vakti" described in brackets as "Geyik Avı" in Eskişehir in 1949, and another opening "Bir çüt geyik bu derede su içer" in Erciş in 1950. The first line of the Merzifon deyiş resembles none of them, and a shared name is not enough to point to a shared story. Whom Kirpiksiz learned the deyiş from, and whether it was tied to an event, is not recorded in print either.

Musical Features

A clue to the length of the deyiş comes from the disc itself; no other musical data on the melody has been published. According to Kaya, from 1943 onwards three or four pieces on average fitted onto one side of the team's discs; "Geyik Avı", by contrast, takes up side A without a break. It is therefore plausible that the deyiş was sung at some length, perhaps with many quatrains, but this is not certain. The date on the other side of the disc also stands out: side B had been filled a day earlier, on 7 July, with "Hanköy Havası" and "Paçalı" played by musicians from Sarı village. The catalogue does not explain why the following day's piece ended up on side A.

Performers and Recordings

Kirpiksiz's session that day did not end with "Geyik Avı"; the minstrel sang four more pieces for the team: "On Sekiz Bin Âlem", "İptida Dünyaya", "Bilbil" and "Dik Delil Makamı". The card of "İptida Dünyaya" notes that a violinist played but does not give his name; Kaya thinks it must have been Rasim Olgun or Turabi Tanrısever. None of these five recordings entered the TRT repertoire, and no performance of the deyiş other than that of 1943 is known. An overall picture of the melodies of Amasya is given in The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources