Story #102 (Tape # , Summer 1963) Narrator: Recep Ergun

Location: Kaza town of P m a r b a ^

Date: July 1963

Can' polat and the

One day a farmer hired a young man to do his farm work He

him, "Take this loaf of but do not eat it; take this pot

but do not eat it [break the surface of it]; take this hound and plow the

place where it lies down."*

The young man took the oxen, the hound, the pot of yogurt, and one

and a half loaves of bread and went to the field. He felt very hungry on

the way, but could not eat anything, as his master had told him, "Do not

eat the loaf; do not eat the yogurt [do not spoil the skin on top of the

pot of yogurt], or else I shall take off enough hide from your back to

make a drum."

The young man returned home very hungry and tired, and without doing

any work at all. His master punished him by skinning the hide of his back

and killed him while doing so.

Not knowing what had happened to his brother, the victim's younger

brother came to the farmer and asked employment from him, but he suffered

in the same way.

The youngest brother, who was called Canpolat, went out in search of

#The narrator has omitted part of the contract between the farmer and the
■employe. Not only must the young man obey the directions about plowing and
about not eating the bread or breaking the surface skin of the yogurt, but
he must also avoid any display of anger. If he fails to keep any of these
conditions, he will lose a strip of hide from his back. The farmer is also
bound by an agreement not to become angry. If he fails to keep this con­
dition, the employe will cut a strip of hide from his back.
his elder brothers, By chance, he discovered that his brothers had been

killed in the service of the farmer. He asked the farmer to give him

employment. The farmer told him, "But I have one condition. If I am not

pleased with your work, I shall take a strip of hide off your back enough

to cover the too of a drum, Bo you agree?"

C&npolat accepted the farmer’s offer,

"All right, son. You can sleep over there and begin work tomorrow

morning," said the farmer.

In the morning he gave Canpolat a hound, a pot of yogurt, two loaves

of bread and a half loaf of breE.d, and two oxen, lie sent the young man to

...................
plow his field at such and such a niece, He gave the vounr mar. the following

instructions: "Do not eat the half, and do not spoil the whole loaves;

11
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do not spoil the skin on the surface of the yogurt, but plow the place

where the hound lies down,"

In the field, the hound found a niece at the bottom of a rock and lay

down to sleep there, "You were responsible for the death of my brothers,"

said the young man to the hound, and kicked it to death. In a fit of anger

he killed one of th^cxerj, too. He then ate the bread ana the yogurt,**

and came back to the farmhouse with one ox.

Tne farmer asked him, "What have you done, son?"

"What could I have done, master? The hound lay at the bottom of a

rock, and would not pet up, so 1 kicked it and killed it. When I was

ploughing the bottom of the rock, one of the oxen died. Are you angry

with me, master?" Cannolat asked.

**The narrator does not know, apparently, how the protagonist eats both
bread and yogurt without disobeying the farmer. The bread is yufKa or
■pjde— both flat-loaved. He is told not to break the edge of the loaf,
he simply cuts out the center ane leaver, the cage intact. He eats the
yogurt by breaking a hole in the bottom of the t1ar ano sucking out its
■contents, leaving the surface skin unbroken.
 » 0 , I am not, son," said the farmer, because he knew that if he said

"yes," Canpolat would take off the hide of his back according to the terns

of the agreement.

The farmer realized that he would not be able to cope with Canpolat,

and he began to think of a plan to get rid of him. He had hired him

during the season w h e ^ j b j ^ ^ b e g i n to sing. He asked his mother,

"Mother, climb that tree and sing there as ibibiks do." His mother climbed

the tree, and when she was about to sing like an ibibik. Canpolat threw a

stone at her, and the old woman toppled down lifeless. Now the farmer was

terribly angry, because he had lost his ox before, and now he had lost

his mother.

One night when he and his fami/y were sitting in the house, the

farmer's young son kept saying (I beg your pardon,) "1. have got to go

out to pee. I have got to go out to pee." The farmer called Canpolat and

told him to take his son outside and "drain him." Canpolat took the

farmer's son outside and in an effort to drain him he crushed the child

to death. He hit the child on a stone and broke him into nine pieces.

When he came back, the farmer asked, "Where is my son?"

Well, did you not say, 'Crack and drain him'? That is what I have

done. Are you angry with me, master?"

"Wo, no, I am not angry with you," said the farmer. If he had said

yes," Canpolat would have skinned the hide of his back. Therefore, the

farmer was frightened and kept quiet.

That night, Canpolat listened to the conversation of the farmer and

his wife through the wall of their bedroom. "Prepare some food, and we shall

pack up and leave early tomorrow morning, or else this man will finish

destroying us," said the farmer to his wife. When the farmer's wife was

#Ibik is the comb of a cock or other male bird. Ibibik would seem to
designate some crested bird or a fowl with a comb.
preparing some food during the night, Canpolat got into the sack in which

the food was put. When they were ready to go, the farmer shouldered the

sack and they. left. When they came near a river, some dogs came out barking.

"If Canpolat were here now, he would have got rid of these dogs easily,"

said the farmer.

When Canpolat heard this inside the sack, he shouted, "Here I am,

master!" Canpolat drove the dogs away and saved the farmer and his wife

from the danger of being bitten.

They decided to spend the night by the river. The farmer and his wife

planned to throw Canpolat into the river when he was asleep.

Overhearing their plan, Canpdlat came and lay between the farmer

and his wife when they were both fast asleep. The farmer made the terrible

mistake of throwing his own wife into the river instead of Canpolat. ##

##The last two paragraphs are greatly telescoped. Usually there are three

or four incidents after their arrival at the river bank