The subtlest feelings of a people are often kept less in thick books than on the lips of mothers, in gatherings of young girls and in houses of mourning. The oral poetry of Amasya, too, has lived for centuries without being written down, passed from memory to memory. Three branches of this poetry are the most closely bound up with everyday life in the region: the mani, which fits joy, love and mockery into four lines; the ninni, sung to put a child to sleep; and the ağıt, which gives voice to the pain of death and separation. The türkü and the long airs (uzun havalar) of Amasya are a separate subject; what follows concerns only how these three genres have lived on from mouth to mouth.

Three Genres of Anonymous Folk Poetry

In folk literature the mani, ninni and ağıt are counted among the anonymous products whose makers are unknown or have been forgotten. Their first characteristic is that they are oral. As they pass from mouth to mouth they undergo small changes and take on the speech, vocabulary and sounds of the region where they spread. Their language is plain, syllabic meter and the quatrain are the basis, and patterns of seven, eight and eleven syllables are used most often. Their subjects are drawn from ordinary human experience: death, love, separation, longing, exile, bravery and social ills. In Amasya these three genres have continued as the common property of generations living side by side, within individual families, villages and neighbourhoods.

The relationship between the genres is a debated matter even in literature textbooks. Some sources do not treat the ninni and the ağıt as independent verse forms; because they are always sung to a melody, they regard them as varieties of the türkü. According to this view the ninni is a türkü variety made of quatrains and refrains sung to put small children to sleep, and the ağıt is one made of melodic words expressing grief at the death of a loved one. It has likewise been recorded that ağıts turn into türküs over time. The mani is separate from these, because it is not always sung to a melody and has a construction of its own.

Mani

Form and Structure

The mani is the smallest verse form of anonymous folk poetry. It generally consists of four lines of seven syllables and shows a unity of meaning within a single quatrain. The rhyme scheme is mostly aaxa, that is, the first, second and fourth lines rhyme and the third is free. This freedom makes things easier for the person improvising a mani. The real feeling and thought emerge in the last two lines, while the first two often consist of an image taken from nature or from everyday objects that prepares the rhyme. The connection of these lines to the subject is not always clear, though they often set up a meaningful association. A well-known Amasya mani illustrates this construction:

Bir dalda iki elma, / Biri al birin alma, / Alnına yazılmışım, / İsder al isder alma. (Two apples on one branch, / Take the one, leave the other, / I am written on your forehead, / Take me or leave me, as you wish.)

The image of the apple in the first line turns into an image of choice in the second, while fate and desire are voiced in the last two lines. The mani has several kinds. The plain mani of seven-syllable lines is the most common; the kesik (truncated) mani has a first line of fewer than seven syllables that merely prepares the rhyme, and is called a cinaslı (punning) mani when built on a homonymous rhyme; those formed by adding two more lines in the same rhyme to the end of a quatrain are called yedekli or artık manis. Manis sung back and forth in question-and-answer form are called deyiş, and in various regions of Anatolia they are also known as bayatı or hoyrat.

The mani lends itself to improvisation. The person who performs manis is called a manici, mani yakıcı, mani düzücü or mani atıcı, depending on the region. Maniciler call the rhyme and refrain part the ayak (foot), and a manici is expected to find an ayak, that is, to make one foot match the other. The first two lines are for the manici a time of preparation, thought and finding a rhyme; the real word is spoken in the last two. Studies of folk literature note that the main subject of the mani is love and that social events are touched upon only in so far as they relate to love. This measure is also seen in the examples collected in Amasya.

Manis Collected in Amasya

Amasya manis appear as a separate entry in the Cultural Inventory prepared by the Amasya Governorate in 2007, and a large number of quatrains preserving the regional dialect are gathered there. In this collection the speech is written down as it is spoken: "gavuşuruz", "gız", "yoh", "çoh", "gozüm". The quatrain "Kavah senden uzun yoh, / Dallarında üzüm yoh, / Seni sevdim seveli, / Başgasında gozüm yoh" (No poplar is taller than you, / No grapes hang on its branches, / Since I have loved you, / My eyes are on no one else) is an example. Some hundred and eighty Amasya manis recorded anonymously give the same speech in a softer spelling: "Üzüm goydum sepete, / Yar oturur tepede" (I put grapes in the basket, / My love sits on the hilltop).

The most common subject in the collections is love. In lines such as "Amasya'nın elması / Hoştur yari sarması" (Amasya's apple, / how sweet to embrace one's love) the name of the city and its fruit become part of the language of love. The regional collection of the Taşova District Governorate also divides the mani by content: those about love, those about separation and longing, those exchanged between mother and daughter, those that the groom's side and the bride's side sing to each other in the form of a contest, and those between bride and mother-in-law. It adds neighbour manis, jealousy manis, manis sung at neighbouring villages and manis of self-praise. So, apart from the axis of love, there is also a branch that tells of the everyday friction and boasting of village life.

Manis also take in the objects of their own era. The collections include words such as taxis, bulldozers, trains, samovars, teapots and newspapers; the quatrain "Dozer geliyor dozer / Çekilin sizi ezer / Benim sevduğum oğlan / Sinan Özer'e benzer" (A bulldozer is coming, get out of the way, / It will crush you, / The boy I love / Looks like Sinan Özer) is one of these. These objects form the first two lines of the mani and meet the beloved in the second two. Soldiering, exile and separation are also among the subjects: "Tren geliyo tren / Komürleri dokerek / Yar asgere gidiyo / Ellerini öperek" (The train is coming, scattering its coal; / My love is going to the army, / kissing hands as he goes) or "Ne yaman esdi felek / Bağrıma basdı felek / Alpaslan'ın içinde / Yarime esdi felek" (How fiercely fate blew, / pressed on my chest; / in Alpaslan / fate blew on my love). That place names such as Alpaslan enter the quatrain shows that the mani speaks to a narrow circle.

Where Manis Are Sung

One study of the tradition of singing manis records that there is no fixed time or special gathering for them and that they can be sung in any setting. Girls, women and men have sung manis while sowing, herding, harvesting, on holidays, at festivities, at henna nights, at the bride's bath, while working together in communal labour (imece) and while dancing the halay. This study, based on fieldwork in the Çukurova region, draws a general picture of the settings for Anatolia; in Amasya too the mani finds voice at the threshing floor, at the grape harvest, at betrothal ceremonies and at holiday gatherings. In summer, when people gather for farm work, manis are sung for amusement and to make the work lighter; in winter they are sung among people gathered around the stove.

In the old city life of Anatolia, the manis sung by Ramadan watchmen and drummers held a place of their own. The people of the neighbourhood, together with the children, followed the drummer from door to door and listened to the manis sung in the saba or dügâh modes. The sanctity of Ramadan, waking people for the pre-dawn meal and the tip were the main subjects of the mani. This custom has largely ended today, and drummers wake people only by beating the drum.

Some manis also steer a ceremony. According to a practice recorded in Çukurova, on the night of Hıdrellez young girls would put small belongings such as a comb, a hairclip or a ring into a vessel, draw them out one by one towards morning, and a mani was sung for the wish of whoever owned the item drawn. These are called mantuvar manis. The fortune is not taken very seriously, but a favourable mani brings joy and an unfavourable one is interpreted as being for the best. We have no separate record of the Amasya counterpart of this practice.

Contests, Courtship and Bride and Mother-in-Law Manis

The liveliest branch of the mani is the contest in which two people sing in turn. The girl's side and the boy's side answer each other with manis, and being unable to answer means being put in a difficult position before the company. The Taşova collection records this tradition from Amasya: to the boy's side saying "Af kapı kara kapı / Yeşil billurun sapı / Siz kızınızı vermezseniz / Sürünsün kapı kapı" (O black door, / with its green crystal handle; / if you will not give your daughter, / let her beg from door to door), the girl's side replies "Bahçede gül ağacı / Dibindedir ilacı / Sizin deli kızınız / Karabiberden de acı" (A rose tree in the garden, / its remedy lies at its foot; / your mad daughter / is more bitter than black pepper), or satirises the boy by saying "Karanfıl katar katar / Ucu sulara batar / Sizin tembel oğlunuz / Baba eline bakar" (Carnations in rows, / their tips dip in the water; / your lazy son / looks to his father's hand). If at the end of the contest the two sides agree, the bargain closes with the lines "Alayı alın düze / Görüşelim yüz yüze / Arada sevgi varmış / Kızı verdik biz size" (Take the procession to the plain, / let us meet face to face; / there was love between them, / we have given you the girl). So the mani has both a harshness and a side that steers towards agreement.

The manis between bride and mother-in-law are a common type in the region and are sung mostly to amuse, sometimes to wound. Some of them are patterns known in many places in Anatolia: the quatrain "Başı saçaklı gelin / İpten kuşaklı gelin / Dün geldin adam oldun / Leylek bacaklı gelin" (Bride with a fringed head, / bride with a rope sash, / yesterday you came, today you are somebody, / bride with stork legs) also appears in the Taşova collection. In the same collection mother-in-law and bride exchange sharp words; in another quatrain, having no pity for the mother-in-law is expressed jokingly. Manis often stand on the narrow line between insult and joke. In another collection there is a quatrain such as "Çay aşağu giderim / Topal koyun güderim / Eğer anam vermezse / Bohçamı alur giderim" (I go down by the stream, / I tend a lame sheep; / if my mother will not give me away, / I will take my bundle and go), which is a word of threat and resolve towards the girl's family.

The mani enters the letter as well. In former times a mani with a veiled meaning was written at the end of letters. Its trace is seen in the governorate's inventory: the quatrains "Akdağda gar galmadı / Yürekde fer galmadı / Daha yazacağıdım / Mekdupda yer galmadı" (No snow is left on Akdağ, / no light is left in the heart; / I had more to write, / no room is left in the letter) and "Mekdup yazdım yazıdı / Galemim beyazıdı / Daha yazacağıdım / Mürekkebim azıdı" (I wrote a letter, a written one, / my pen was white; / I had more to write, / my ink was too little) say that the paper and the ink will run out but the words will not. All this shows that the mani, besides being an oral genre, was able to enter written life too.

Advice and Curses

One function of manis is to give advice. Some counsel a son, a daughter or a bride, warn those who have behaved wrongly and remind them of respect for elders. These are called warning manis and serve to pass customs and traditions from generation to generation. Curse (kargış or beddua) manis are sung against those who have done wrong; in the Çukurova collection, lines refusing the sight of paradise to those who have broken up a couple are given as an example of this type. The quatrain "Mercimek gatma aşa, / Heves etme oynaşa, / Severlerde almazlar, / Sonra gaharlar başa" (Do not put lentils in the soup, / do not covet a flirtation; / those who love are not taken, / and then the grief falls on one's head) from the Amasya collections is a gentle example of advice. Wish and prayer manis express the good things a person hopes for themselves or their relatives.

Ninni

The ninni is a set of quatrains that a mother or a relative sings to a particular melody to put a child to sleep or to soothe it. As the first poem and the first melody a child hears, it is counted as the first school of the mother tongue. While the repetition of melody and word calms the child, the mother also places her own troubles, hopes and prayers inside the words. For this reason the ninni is often a poem sung as much to the singer herself as to the child being lulled.

The texts the Taşova District Governorate publishes among the ninnis of the region show this feeling clearly. In some ninnis the words begin by wishing the child sleep and growth: "Eeeee dedim dedim / Ak beşiğe beledim / Uyur uyur inşallah / Gören desin maşallah / Yavrum büyük inşallah" (Eeee, I said, I said, / I wrapped you in the white cradle; / may you sleep, God willing, / may those who see you say maşallah, / may my child grow, God willing). Right after this the mother's own state comes through: "Ninni derim uyumazsın / Uyumazsan büyümezsin / Benim derdimi bilemezsin" (I sing a ninni and you do not sleep, / if you do not sleep you will not grow, / you cannot know my trouble). In another ninni, the lines "Gül dağında güller biter / Ensesinde bülbül öter / Benim derdim bana yeter" (Roses grow on Rose Mountain, / a nightingale sings at its nape, / my trouble is enough for me) say that the trouble is hidden from the child and belongs to the mother alone. The line "Verme Allahım bundan beter" (My God, do not give worse than this) shows that the ninni closes with a prayer.

There are playful, game-like parts in these ninnis too. The lines "Dandini dandini dasdana / Danalar girmiş bostana / Kov bostancı danayı / Yemesin lahanayı" (Dandini dandini dasdana, the calves have got into the melon garden, / chase the calves away, gardener, / so they do not eat the cabbage) stand between a counting rhyme known in other regions and a ninni, and carry the image of animals and a garden that will please a child. The quatrain "Camdan beşik oyduralım / İçine güller dolduralım / Eğer uykun yok ise / Gel seni kaldıralım" (Let us have a cradle carved of glass, / let us fill it with roses; / if you are not sleepy, / come, let us lift you up) aims also at amusing the child rather than bringing sleep. In the same collection the ninni appears in tones that range from joking to prayer.

The ninni is also connected with the mani. The study of the tradition of singing manis records that mothers sing the manis they make for their babies to a ninni melody and that such ninnis are very common in rural areas. A mani can become a ninni when its melody changes, and a ninni can become a mani when its content changes. This fluidity is another example showing that the boundaries between genres in anonymous oral literature are not fixed. Even so, the ninni is the closest and most intimate of the three genres, because it belongs only to one person and the sleeping hour of one child.

Ağıt

Origin and Meaning

The ağıt is a poem sung to express the grief felt at a person's death; yet it is not limited to death alone. Ağıts are also sung after separation, exile, departure for military service, a bride's leaving home and natural disasters. The fieldwork of Haluk Yücel on the ağıts of the Amasya region connects the word to the root "ağ", the verb meaning to rise towards the sky. Because the early Turks believed that the souls of the dead rose to the sky, the ağıt has been linked with this root. Some researchers think the word derives from the Old Turkic verb "sığtamak", meaning to weep. Before Islam the words sagu and yuğ were used in place of ağıt; yuğ, which appears in the Orkhon Inscriptions, is counted as the oldest mourning ceremony known in writing in Turkish history.

The first sagu known in writing in Turkish literature is the sagu for Alp Er Tunga in Kaşgarlı Mahmud's Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk: "Alp Er Tonga öldi mü? / Issız ajun kaldı mı? / Ödlek öçin aldı mı? / Emdi yürek yırtılur." (Is Alp Er Tonga dead? / Has the world been left desolate? / Has the treacherous one taken his revenge? / Now the heart is torn.) Written in a 4+3 syllable meter, this sagu is regarded as the ancestor of today's ağıts. The Book of Dede Korkut also contains examples of ağıts. The same tradition is known to have existed among the Sumerians and in ancient China; so lamenting is not bound to a single region or era but is a shared behaviour of human communities. The regions of Anatolia express this tradition with a great variety of names: bayatı, deme, lâvik, ölgülü, sızılama, şivan, yakım, yas and others.

The Ağıt Tradition in Amasya

The tradition of singing ağıts is widespread in Amasya. Yücel's fieldwork states that this tradition is performed more frequently in the districts of Merzifon and Taşova and their villages, and that in some villages women go to funerals to sing ağıts. In some villages there are even people who specialise in singing ağıts. They go to houses of mourning and recount the good qualities, generosity and admirable habits of the deceased, and sing ağıts. At weddings, as henna singers, they sing their ağıts to the girl who is to be married, with or without a saz. Almost all of the ağıts Yücel collected in the villages of the Amasya centre and the districts of Merzifon, Taşova and Suluova were sung by women. Another finding of the study is that the tradition continues in Amasya without any need to be put into writing.

Ağıts are classified around death and separation. They include ağıts on illness and separation, those sung for the dead and for martyrs, marriage ağıts, those sung for animals that have died, natural-disaster ağıts and ağıts for sending off soldiers. The ağıt sung to the bride on the henna night is called a gelin ağıtı or gelin yası; because the bride is to be taken out of her father's house, the aim is to make her weep, and the ceremony proceeds just like a death lament. This is why the ağıt, which at first was sung only for death and separation, has widened over time to subjects such as henna and weddings. Among the examples Yücel collected, those on death predominate; two ağıts concern a bride.

Collected Examples

Yücel's article includes a wedding ağıt known, with some changes, in the village of Kara Mustafa Paşa (Marınca) in Merzifon. It is sung in the voice of a young girl pushed into a marriage not of her choosing: "Ana ben gediyom ele, / Çok mu geldim sığmadım eve? / Garip düştüm dağa taşa, / Anam anam canım anam" (Mother, I am going to strangers, / Did I come too much, did I not fit in the house? / I have fallen forlorn among mountains and stones, / Mother, mother, my dear mother). The girl, forced to marry because of poverty, explains her situation by saying that if her father had not given her away and her brothers had said stay, she would not have gone, and at the end of the quatrain she repeats the refrain "Anam anam ciğerim anam" (Mother, mother, my dearest mother). The ağıt has a rhyme scheme of aaab cccb dddb and resorts to exclamatory words such as "anam" to keep the syllable count.

An ağıt sung in Taşova is built in free meter and tells of the grief of a child who has lost a mother: "Dağlar dağladı beni anam anam" (The mountains scarred me, mother, mother), "Sensiz evlere giremiyom ciğerim yok, / Sensiz yerlere giremiyom aslanım yok" (I cannot enter houses without you, my dearest is gone; / I cannot go anywhere without you, my lion is gone). In another ağıt, "Yüce Dağ", the pain of death is told in the voice of a woman who died young, and the quatrains end with the line "Bu genç yaşta toprak oldu bedenim anam bedenim" (My body has turned to earth at this young age, mother, my body). "Üç Gün Önce Gördüm" is written in a five-syllable meter and was sung when a loved one died; the phrase "Kıyma kanlı zalim bana kıyma" (Do not strike me down, bloody tyrant) is repeated in every quatrain, and at one point in the ağıt hands stained with henna and a green garment wrapped in a bundle are mentioned.

Another ağıt that Yücel cites was sung for a bride who fell into the Kızılırmak and drowned, and is said to have spread throughout the region. The lines "Dalgıç getir şu gelini bulalım / Biz gelinsiz nasıl köye varalım" (Bring a diver so we can find the bride; / how can we reach the village without her) say that they cannot go back to the village without finding the bride. Similar versions of the same ağıt have been recorded in neighbouring provinces. "Viran Dağlar" tells of the feelings of someone forced to leave home and circulates from mouth to mouth like a türkü. In Amasya, a city surrounded by mountains, the refrain "Yıkılsın şu viran dağlar" (May these desolate mountains fall) looks like a geographical counterpart of separation; one quatrain mentions parting from the mountains of Amasya and the vineyards of Ayvasıl. In an ağıt sung in Gümüşhacıköy, too, a mother sings to her bride-daughter, and at its end the words "Viran dağlar anam viran dağlar" (Desolate mountains, mother, desolate mountains) are repeated.

Melody and Delivery

The melodies of ağıts come into being when the singer fits words to old local melodic patterns held in memory. For this reason, to sing an ağıt means to place new words in set patterns; the melody carries both the rhythm and speech characteristics of the region and the personal style of the singer. In most ağıts the melody moves within a narrow range of four or five notes lying close together. Those sung in free rhythm fall within the long-air (uzun hava) form of Turkish folk music; they follow a course that starts on high notes and descends, and fall quickly to the final note towards the end. In some ağıts an instrument accompanies, and the bağlama is the instrument most used for this; in some regions the zurna and cümbüş are used as well. The saz plays a short section at the opening, in the middle and before the end, and prepares the listener's ear for the ağıt.

In placing words into lines, exclamatory words are important: aman, of, vay, anam, yavrum, aslanım, oğul and the like both keep the meter and convey the pain. Because it rests on improvisation, the same ağıt is never sung the same way twice; the ağıt singer builds a new text on old foundations, adding the event and the person of that day. Over time some ağıts turn into türküs. Yücel therefore notes that some Amasya ağıts are also sung like türküs at weddings, betrothals and entertainments, and that the singer and the listener alike take great pleasure in it.

Passing from Mouth to Mouth

The present state of these three genres differs from one to another. The tradition of singing manis is described in studies as a custom that has begun to lose importance compared with the past. Formerly it was very common for young girls and boys to exchange manis; today it is done mostly among girls and within the family. Informants who say that old manis were based on an event or a situation report that today everything has become a subject for the mani. Some say old manis were more emotional and woven of more concise words, while others say there is no difference between old and new. Manis are passed on by listening and learning from elders; those who sing manis are generally people who have tasted either grief or love.

The situation is similar for ağıts. Yücel notes that Amasya ağıts have continued without being written down and that no earlier study on the subject existed. For this purpose the study used notes taken while travelling district by district and village by village. Works such as the governorate's inventory and the district governorate's collection show that a part of these genres has been put into writing. The written sources, however, mostly record the text; the melody, the gestures and the moment of singing can be learned only by listening to a living singer.

Studies examining the words and music of Amasya türküs note that the türküs of the region are sung with the bağlama and that this tradition reaches back to the musical culture of Central Asia; the closeness of the ninni and the ağıt to the türkü form takes on meaning within this frame. The details of the türkü are the subject of a separate article. What needs to be said here is that the mani, the ninni and the ağıt are not three separate worlds independent of one another but were born at different moments of the same oral tradition: joy and mockery speak in the mani, sleep and prayer in the ninni, mourning and separation in the ağıt.

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