Original Ottoman Turkish Text

Metre: 11-syllable syllabic metre

Başıň içün olsun seḥer yelleri
Bir ḫaber ver dâr-ı yâre gidersen
Baḳ beni aňar mı şirin dilleri
O kâkül-i müşki-bâre gidersen

In English

1. O morning breezes, by your life, bring me some news if you go to the beloved's dwelling. If you go to those musk-scented locks, see whether that sweet tongue remembers me.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Structure of the Poem

The poem is a koşma. The koşma is the most common verse form of minstrel poetry; it is built of quatrains and usually sung in an eleven-syllable metre. The lines have a caesura after 6+5 or 4+4+3 syllables; the syllable count is ours. Because Hakverdioğlu's article publishes only the first verse unit of each poem in the cönk, we know only the first quatrain of this poem. The first and third lines rhyme in "yelleri / dilleri", the second and fourth in "dâr-ı yâre / müşki-bâre"; "gidersen" is the refrain. To whom and on what occasion the poem was composed is not known.

Meaning and Figures of Speech

The quatrain continues an old folk tradition that makes the morning breeze a messenger. The oath "başın için", "by your head", that is "by your life", addresses the wind as a friend. The lover asks two things: that the breeze going to the beloved's "dâr", her dwelling, bring news of her, and that it see whether her sweet tongue remembers him. "Kâkül-i müşkbâr", the musk-shedding locks, links the beloved's scent with the wind; the wind touches the locks and carries their fragrance. The wind's journey to the beloved thus means bringing both news and scent. The phrase "şirin dil" (sweet tongue) also recalls the name of Şirin from the story of Ferhad and Şirin.

Historical Context

The poem is recorded under the name of Tokatlı Nûrî in the Merzifon Cönkü introduced by Metin Hakverdioğlu in 2019; with thirty-six poems, Nûrî is the poet the cönk gives most space to. Drawing on Orhan Bilgin, Hakverdioğlu relates that Eyüb Sabrî of Merzifon often invited Nûrî to Merzifon; Nûrî's weight in the cönk can be explained by this friendship. Since other minstrels also used the pen name Nûrî, it is not certain that every Nûrî poem in the cönk belongs to Tokatlı Nûrî; the article attributes these poems to Tokatlı Nûrî. For the poet's life and his connection with Amasya, see the page on Tokatlı Nûrî. The poem is on page 4 of the cönk and page 547 of the article; its full text is in the cönk itself and has not been published to date.

Bibliography

Online sources