Hey Kargalar Kargalar (Hey, Crows, Crows)
Story
The song opens with crows shaking a walnut branch and tells of a girl who has just turned fifteen, waving to her sweetheart. The second verse playfully teases unmarried girls with images of the alıç (hawthorn) by the stream and henna-dyed fingertips; in the last verse we hear the hurt of someone who says that, had their mother and father been alive, they would not have been left here. The cries “hele gülüm amman amman” (oh, my rose) accompany the lines. No traditional story behind the song was found in the sources.
About
It is a “kırık hava” (metered folk tune) from the Sungurlu district of Çorum, registered as TRT Repertoire No. 3147. The source singer is Rıfat Özsaraç; it was collected and set to notation by Ali Canlı (Repertükül, Türkü Dostları). On the TRT Music Department’s score sheet the piece carries the shorter title “Hey Kargalar” and the collection date 3 August 1952, as on Türkü Dostları — the same date as Elma Aldım Bartın’dan. According to Repertükül, it uses the gülizar scale (makamsal dizi) in 4/4 time. Türkü Dostları notes that the song also appears in Levent Sezgin’s Çorum Halk Türküleri ve Oyun Havaları (Folk Songs and Dance Tunes of Çorum, 2004).
For more on the district, see Sungurlu.
Lyrics
In short, the words move from a teenage girl’s first love and teasing remarks about unmarried girls to the sadness of someone left alone without parents. (The Turkish opening lines are quoted on the Turkish page; line variants differ between sources.)