Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: eight-syllable syllabic metre

Dalgam yeğin derya gibi
Bir ummana dalıp gider
Yaban bakma eller gibi
Ay aleme bakıp gider
Aydan ayan oldu derim
Yoluna kurbandır serim
Ellagam darılmış yârim
Kaşlarını yıkıp gider
Gökte yıldız zülfü telli
Sen eyledin beni deli
Güzelin erkânı yolu
Aşkı sinem yakıp gider
Kul Hüseyin’in duası
Boyladı umman ovası
Bin katarda bir devesi
İleriye çekip gider.

In English

1. My wave is mighty as the sea; it dives into an ocean and goes. Do not look askance as others do; the moon looks upon the world and goes.

2. I say it has become plain from the moon; my head is a sacrifice on your road. I think my beloved is offended with me; she knits her brows and goes.

3. The star in the sky is her many-stranded lock; it was you who drove me mad. The rite and the road of the beauty become love, burn my breast and go.

4. The prayer of Kul Hüseyin has sounded the depths of the ocean plain; one camel in a caravan of a thousand pulls ahead and goes.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

This text is a close variant of deyiş no. 10 ("Dalgam yeğin derya gibi / Bahri umman akar gider"): the quatrain "Kapı Hüseyin'in kaşta" found there is missing here, and the redif reads "dalıp gider" instead of "akar gider". Işık publishes the two texts as separate deyiş and collected this one from the accounts of Âşık Cafer Aydoğdu and Hüseyin Zeytünlü, known as Âşık Kara Hüseyin. In the four quatrains the redif "gider" (goes) is preceded by the converbs "dalıp, bakıp, yıkıp, çekip" (diving, looking, knitting, pulling); in the first quatrain the first and third lines meet on the word "gibi" (like), and in the rest the first three lines rhyme ("derim, serim, yârim", "telli, deli, yolu", "duası, ovası, devesi"). The metre is the eight-syllable syllabic measure, and the genre, according to Işık, the güzelleme. The pen name (mahlas) appears in the closing quatrain as "Kul Hüseyin'in". The article explains the word "ellagam" as meaning "I suppose" in the local speech.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

That the same deyiş was collected in two different forms from two different informants shows that Kul Hüseyin's poems long lived only in oral tradition. Işık writes that all the information and deyiş concerning Kul Hüseyin were gathered from the words of those who believed in him and that there is no official record. In oral transmission lines undergo small changes and quatrains are added or dropped; these two texts are a clear example of that process.

In meaning the deyiş carries the same images as deyiş no. 10: a wave mighty as the sea, the moon that looks upon the world without looking askance, the frowning beloved, the strands of hair like stars. The last quatrain is the closest to the form Işık quotes when describing Kul Hüseyin's life: "Boyladı umman ovası" and "İleriye çekip gider". According to Işık, in these lines Kul Hüseyin speaks knowing the power of his word and likens his own task to the wave that leads the way in the sea of truth.

Bibliography

Online sources