Elma Aldım Bartın'dan (I Bought Apples from Bartın)
Story
The song opens in the voice of a young man who has bought apples from Bartın (a town on the Black Sea coast), boasts of a pistol worn on his belt and says he has fallen for a sweetheart whose family hails from Bartın. The refrain beginning “Aşık atalım mı” playfully proposes that the two run away together before her parents find out. Later verses use everyday images — an apple placed on a dish, straw in a sieve — to tease the beauties and the plain alike. 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. 3140. 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 is titled “Elma Aldım Bartın’dan (Aşık atalım mı)” and the collection date is given as 3 August 1952, as on Türkü Dostları; Hey Kargalar Kargalar, another Sungurlu song, was collected on the same date. According to Repertükül, it uses the hüseyni and eviç scales (makamsal dizi) in 4/4 time.
Türkü Dostları notes that in one of the source singer’s recordings an additional verse and a separate refrain, not given in the TRT score, are also sung, and that the song appears in Levent Sezgin’s Çorum Halk Türküleri ve Oyun Havaları (Folk Songs and Dance Tunes of Çorum, 2004). Other songs collected from Rıfat Özsaraç: Fistan Giymiş Kırmalı, Pencereden El Eder. For more on the district, see Sungurlu.
Lyrics
In short, a swaggering young man sings of a sweetheart with roots in Bartın, invites her to elope and pokes fun at beauties and plain girls in light-hearted verses. (The Turkish opening lines are quoted on the Turkish page; line variants differ between sources.)