Yüce Dağ Başına Kurdum Arılık (I Set My Beehive on the High Mountain)
Story
The song opens with the striking image of setting a beehive on a high mountain, then ties this image to devotion to a beloved: “I set my beehive on the high mountain / For love’s road I have become entwined.” The line “first loving, loving, then parting” captures the inevitability of separation that follows love, and the closing thought — that there are simply no words for it — deepens the song’s ache. Sung with the drawn-out, plaintive delivery typical of the bozlak form, it continues to be performed by folk musicians today.
About
It is an “uzun hava” (unmetered long-form song), specifically a bozlak, from the Çorum region. The source singer is the folk poet Haydar Öztürk; it was collected by Musa Eroğlu.
Lyrics
The bozlak’s known, traditional (anonymous) opening lines:
I set my beehive on the high mountain,
For love’s road I have become entwined.
(Line variants differ from source to source.)