The song's narrator lists his misfortunes and charges each one to fate, and the list begins in the mosque: he performs his ablutions for the afternoon prayer, reaches the mosque, his eye falls on a rug and he takes a beating. Next comes the ox bought at the market for sixty kuruş and lamed on its very first morning, then a complaint against a fate that is generous to others but grudges him even a plain grey garment. The only source presenting the three-stanza text as an Amasya song is an online collection that gives the words as anonymous.

Catalogue Data

  • Repertoire no.: none; not found in TRT's Amasya repertoire
  • Region: Amasya
  • Source performer, collector, place and date of collection: not in the published text
  • Mode (makam), metre: unknown
  • Words and music: anonymous
  • Links: no TRT link; the words are on Türkü Yurdu

Lyrics

Ebdest aldım da ilkindiyi gılmaya
Camiye vardım namazımı durmaya
Gözümü ağdurdum iyce kilim çalmaya
Orda da zopayı yidürdün gader bana

Sürüne sürüne pazara vardum
Altmış kuruş verdim bir öküz aldum
Sabaha koşmadan gıçını gırdım
Onu da üç gıçlı eyledin gader

Ağlarım ağlarım gözlerim yaşlı
Dört evlet büyüttüm çileli başlı
Ellere kumaş geydirdin ucu nakışlı
Bana da boz urbayı mehel görmedin gönül

In English: I took my ablutions to perform the afternoon prayer, I went to the mosque to stand for prayer; I let my eye slide well and truly towards stealing a rug, and there too you made me eat the stick, fate. Dragging myself along I reached the market, paid sixty kuruş and bought an ox; before yoking it to work in the morning I broke its leg, and you made that one three-legged too, fate. I weep and weep, my eyes are wet; with my burdened head I raised four children; you dressed others in cloth with embroidered edges, and did not think me worthy even of a grey garment. "Gılmak" is kılmak, to perform a prayer; "zopa" is sopa, stick; "yidürmek" is yedirmek, to make eat; "gıç" is an animal's leg or haunch; "evlet" is evlat, child; "urba" is garment; "mehel görmek" is to deem worthy; and "iyce" is iyice, thoroughly. The text gives no exact sense for "ağdurmak" in the third line; from the context one gathers that the eye slid towards the rug.

Story

No published tale claims that this chain of misfortunes befell a real person, and who sang the song, in which village or in what years, is unknown.

Musical Features

There is no published notation, nor any stated metre. The line lengths in the text are uneven: the lines of the first stanza stretch to twelve and thirteen syllables, while all four lines of the second stanza have eleven. The word "gader", fate, comes back at each stanza's close like a refrain and in the third stanza gives way to "gönül", heart. How the melody carries this irregularity cannot be understood without a recording.

Performers and Recordings

Neither a singer's name nor a disc or archive recording is documented for this song. Nor does any piece opening with these words appear among the recordings that the Ankara State Conservatory catalogued from its 1943 work in Amasya. For a wider survey of the region's tunes, the place to go is The Melody of Yeşilırmak.

Bibliography

Online sources