Turkish Hikaye-Telling Tradition in Azerbaijan, Iran

Abstract

HIKAYE IS A TURKISH FOLK NARRATIVE FORM which cannot properly be included in any of the folk narrative classification systems presently used by Western scholars. Such prose narrative names as tale, legend, and anecdote or poetical genres like epic and ballad do not adequately describe the hikaye form. Although medieval chantefable and romance are the closest folk genres, I shall use the Turkish name in my discussion. Though prose narrative is dominant in a hikaye, it also contains several folk songs. These songs, which represent the greater part of the Turkish folk music repertory (love songs, ritual songs, laments, heroic songs), may number more than one hundred in a single hikaye, each one having three, five, or more stanzas. Hikaye of Kerem and Ash, for example, contains 143 songs.' The teller himself sings these songs, often accompanying himself with a saz, a musical instrument with a long neck and egg-shaped body having three to twelve strings and an indispensable part of Turkish folk poetry. The prose section is usually related in the third person, but songs are in the first person. Prose alternates with poetry when the emotion is high, when the hero talks about his love and his fears, the beauty of nature, and the power of God, or when his life or the life of his lady is in danger. In such cases narration of the story line ceases, for Turkish folk poetry does not relate the course of events. The hikaye teller is always a professional wandering minstrel, an ashzk,2 who makes at least part of his living by telling hikayes or by singing songs. An ashik may or may not compose or improvise original poetry. At all events he knows the large repertory of folk songs and poems created by other artists. He may be the author composer of a hikaye however; in this case both the poetry and prose sections are his original creation, the beginning of a long oral tradition. Although his hikaye may undergo significant changes in the process of oral transmission, his name may continue to be associated with it as its author. An ashik may know several hikayes composed by other Ashiks, which he tells in coffee houses, at wedding ceremonies, and in private homes.