Opening with the plea "Gidiyom deme bana, galır hatırım sana", "don't tell me you're leaving, I'll take it to heart", this song was recorded at Zigala, the first village the Ankara State Conservatory's 1943 collecting journey visited after the town of Amasya. Zigala is known today as Aydınca. The team spent 5 July there and on the same day also recorded pieces such as "İnce Çayır Biçilmez" and "Ben Bir Çakı Bıçağım (Haleylim)". The repertoire data give the source performer as Hüseyin Kılıç and write the village name as "Uygur Köyü"; the place in the conservatory catalogue is Zigala. Its number in the TRT repertoire is 1875.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: 1875, TRT THM kırık hava
  • Region: Amasya; "Uygur Köyü" in the repertoire, Zigala (Aydınca) in the conservatory catalogue
  • Source performer: Hüseyin Kılıç, who is also the performer
  • Collected by: Ankara State Conservatory
  • Date of collection: 5 July 1943; catalogue title "Gidiyom Degme"
  • Transcribed by: Ateş Köyoğlu
  • Mode: Uşşak; final and closing note La
  • Metre: 4/4
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Links: as TRT has no official page for the work, the repertoire data and lyrics are on Repertükül; another written version of the lyrics is on Türkü Yurdu.

Lyrics

Gidiyom deme bana (da)
Galır hatırım sana
Alt'ayın üç gecesi (de)
Misafirim ben sana
Bağlantı:
Haydin esmerim haydi de
Bakışın beni baydı
Dal boyun beni baydı
İlin nazlı yarine de
Nasıl diyelim haydi
Erzurum Van dolaştı (da)
Bülbül dala dolaştı
Murad alacak sırada
Gahbe felek ulaştı
(Bağlantı)
İnceldim hilal oldum (da)
Bilmedim ne hal oldum
Gündüz hayalin ile (de)
Gece uykudan oldum
(Bağlantı)

The meaning of four words is supplied by the small glossary beneath the notation: ilin means of strangers, baymak to make faint, murat wish, and dal long; dal boyun is a tall, slender figure. The idiom hatırım kalır means to be hurt, to take offence. The first quatrain thus reads: don't tell me you're leaving, I'll be hurt. The source does not explain the word "Alt'ayın" in the third line; if it is read as a contraction of "altı ayın", "of six months", the singer complains that of six months he may be the beloved's guest on only three nights. The word could be resolved in other ways; this is only a suggestion.

The refrain calls to a dark beauty: come on, my dark one, your glance and your slender figure have made me faint; how shall we say "come on" to a beloved who belongs to someone else. In the second quatrain the nightingale winds round the branch, and just as the wish is about to be granted, treacherous fate intervenes; naming Erzurum and Van is a way of saying that the sufferer has wandered far-off lands. The last quatrain tells how love works on the body: I grew thin, became a crescent, did not know what had become of me; my days passed with your image, and at night I lost my sleep.

Story

No printed or online source was found that attaches an origin story to the song. The collector's slip, too, records only the title, village and date.

Musical Features

In Nail Demircioğlu's table analysing Amasya's Uşşak-type folk songs "Gidiyom Deme Bana" stands sixth: final La, metre 4/4, lowest note La, highest Mi, a range of five notes. Demircioğlu identifies eight Uşşak songs in Amasya and notes that none of them uses every note of the scale. This song, too, never goes below its final; it turns within the fifth between La and Mi without once touching Sol, the leading note of Uşşak. These are also the notes in the repertoire data, where the closing note is likewise written as La.

The syllables "da" and "de" added at the ends of lines complete the melody's measure, while the "haydi" repeated in the last line of the refrain turns it into a call. In metre the song follows the 4/4 pattern that Demircioğlu finds in 62.5 per cent of Amasya's Uşşak songs. Haluk Yücel, too, counts it among the kırık havas in his 2018 classification.

Performers and Recordings

The repertoire data assign the performance to the source performer. An online folk song archive that publishes lyrics also gives the text under Hüseyin Kılıç's name and lists it together with his "İnce Çayır Biçilmez". In the TRT repertoire Hüseyin Kılıç's name appears on three Amasya works: 1875, 1885 ("İnce Çayır Biçilmez") and 4597 ("Ben Bir Çakı Bıçağım"). The recording published with the notation carries no singer's name. Nor does the credit of any other singer who took up the song after Hüseyin Kılıç appear in the publications consulted.

Collections and Variants

The online text given as the second link in the catalogue data has the same three quatrains as the repertoire, but writes out the refrain in full after every quatrain and repeats its last line ("Nasıl diyelim haydi") twice, putting into writing the repetition heard in performance. The conservatory catalogue records the song as "Gidiyom Degme: Gediyom deme bana", with the first line in dialect pronunciation. What the word "Degme" in the title refers to is not explained in the catalogue. For an overview of Amasya's 48 folk songs in the TRT repertoire see our article on Amasya folk songs and long airs.

Bibliography

Academic studies

Other sources

Online sources