Keloğlan Goes to Buy Nothing is an Anatolian tale of the Keloğlan cycle. His mother sends him to the grocer for hiç — a word that means both “nothing” and, in older usage, “salt.” Keloğlan takes it the wrong way round, and every stranger who beats him for it teaches him a new phrase to say, which he then says to precisely the wrong person.
ℹ️ This is an English translation of a Turkish oral folk tale. The whole story turns on a pun that cannot survive translation; the key word has been left in Turkish and explained in the notes below. The Turkish original is available here: Keloğlan Hiç Alıyor (Anadolu Masalı).
KELOĞLAN GOES TO BUY NOTHING
Once there was, once there was not. God had many servants. To eat too much was a sin, and to say “there is none” was a sin too.1 Once upon a time there was a Keloğlan2 and his mother. One day his mother gave him ten para:
– Off you go, Keloğlan, my bald boy, go to the grocer and fetch me ten para’s worth of hiç3, she said.
In those days what we plainly call salt went by the name hiç. So that he would not forget what his mother had told him, Keloğlan went along the road muttering, “hiç, hiç.” On and on he went, until he came to the seashore. The fishermen had cast their nets in the night, and in the morning they were hauling them in from the beach all together, chanting “hay hak, hay hak.”4
Our Keloğlan came up and stood there, and so as not to forget his mother’s words he kept saying, “hiç, hiç.” The more he said it, the angrier the fishermen grew, and hauling and hauling with their “hay hak, hay hak” they came to the end of the net — and there was not a single fish in it. As long as Keloğlan said “hiç, hiç,” no fish would come. And when the bag at the end of the nets came up empty too, they set upon that Keloğlan standing there muttering “hiç, hiç,” and gave him a fine beating, turning him this way and that.
Keloğlan said ah, he said oh, he took his beating — and his mother’s instruction flew straight out of his bald head. Setting the ache and the sting of the beating aside, he asked in his alarm:
– All right then, what am I to say now, what words shall I use, my fisherman fathers?
One of the fishermen said to him:
– You are to say, “One has come out, let two more come.”
Keloğlan took these words onto his tongue, and as he walked along saying “One has come out, let two more come,” he stopped in front of a house. They were carrying a coffin out of the door.
– One has come out, let two more come, he said — and the mourners set the coffin down on the spot and fell to beating him, turning him this way and that.
Keloğlan said ah, he said oh, he took his beating — and the fishermen’s words flew out of his head as well. Setting the ache and the sting aside, he asked in his alarm:
– All right then, what am I to say now, what words shall I use, my lords and masters?
The imam instructed him:
– You are to say, “God have mercy on him, and grant patience and reward to those he leaves behind.”
Keloğlan went along the road repeating these words, until he saw the carcass of a dog lying on the ground. He stopped at once and began to say over it:
– God have mercy on him, and grant patience and reward to those he leaves behind.
When the passers-by, holding their noses, heard this, they swarmed around Keloğlan and gave him a fine beating, turning him this way and that. Keloğlan said ah, he said oh, he took his beating — and the words of the lords and masters flew out of his bald head too.
Setting the sting and the ache aside, he asked in his alarm:
– All right then, what am I to say now, what words shall I use, travellers?
And the travellers told him:
– You are to say, “Ugh, what a stench! Phew, what a stench!”
Keloğlan took these words onto his tongue, and as he went along saying “Ugh, what a stench! Phew, what a stench!” he came upon women leaving the bathhouse with their bundles under their arms. Holding his nose, Keloğlan turned to the women and said:
– Ugh, what a stench! Phew, what a stench! — and no sooner had he said it than the women set their bundles aside, surrounded Keloğlan, and set about beating him and pinching his flesh until his howling and bellowing scratched at the sky.
Keloğlan said ah, he said oh, he took his beating — and here too the travellers’ words flew out of his head. Setting the ache and the sting aside, he asked in his alarm:
– All right then, what am I to say now, what words shall I use, my good aunts and sisters?
And they instructed him firmly:
– You are to say, “Oh how lovely, oh how fine, sweet as musk, sweet as musk.”
Keloğlan went along the road repeating these words, until he came upon two people at each other’s throats. He planted himself in front of them and began:
– Oh how lovely, oh how fine, sweet as musk, sweet as musk. The men no sooner heard this than they dropped their quarrel, fell upon Keloğlan and gave the poor wretch a thorough drubbing, without so much as a by-your-leave. The boy’s groaning and whimpering dwindled until it was no more than the mewing of a cat. That Keloğlan said ah, he said oh, and he took his beating. But the women’s words flew out of his bald head too.
Setting the ache and the sting aside, he asked in his alarm:
– All right then, what am I to say now, what words shall I use, masters?
And the quarrellers taught him:
– You are to say, “Do not do it, brothers; leave off, companions!”
As Keloğlan went along committing to memory what the quarrelling masters had taught him, this time he came upon two dogs snarling at each other in the road. He stopped over them and began:
– Do not do it, brothers; leave off, companions. The moment the passers-by heard these words they fell upon Keloğlan and set about shoving, cuffing, beating and cursing the poor wretch. That Keloğlan said ah, he said oh, and he took his beating.
But what the quarrelling masters had taught him flew out of his bald head as well. Setting the ache and the sting aside, he asked in his alarm:
– All right then, what am I to say now, what words shall I use, sirs?
And the gentlemen passing by instructed him firmly:
– You are to say, “Shoo, shoo! Shoo, shoo!”
As Keloğlan went along committing to memory what the gentlemen had taught him, he came upon a slipper-maker’s shop. He stopped, and became thoroughly absorbed in watching how the slipper-makers worked.
The slipper-makers had the slippers set on their lasts, and drawing the waxed cords to either side with a “creak, creak,” they stitched all the way round in the blink of an eye, then drew them off the last, gripped them in their teeth, turned them right side out and smoothed them. Keloğlan planted himself opposite them, watching and saying all the while, “Shoo, shoo! Shoo, shoo!”
The slipper-makers, the slippers in their teeth, paused once, listened twice, rolled their eyes at him and waited. It did no good. They sprang up at once and burst out of their shop. They seized that Keloğlan by the collar and beat him black and blue, this way and that, until he did not know what had hit him. That Keloğlan said ah, he said oh, and took his beating from head to foot. But what the gentlemen had taught him flew out of his bald head too; and setting the ache and the sting aside, he asked in his alarm:
– All right then, what am I to say now, what words shall I use, my slipper-maker uncles?
And the slipper-makers taught him, one by one:
– You are to say, “Pull, pull, let it stretch; long, long, let it grow.”
As Keloğlan went along saying what the slipper-makers had taught him, he came upon a man pulling his son’s ear and scolding him. He stopped to watch, and said to them:
– Pull, pull, let it stretch; long, long, let it grow — whereupon the ear the man was pulling came away and stayed in his hand. The man turned, caught Keloğlan, and beat him with slaps and blows, this way and that. That Keloğlan said ah, he said oh, and took this beating too from head to foot. But the slipper-makers’ words flew out of his bald head as well. Setting the ache and the sting aside, he asked in his alarm:
– All right then, what am I to say now, what words shall I use, good uncle?
And this man, out of his anger and out of his grief, said:
– You are to say “hiç,” Keloğlan — and all at once Keloğlan came to his senses.
– My mother told me to buy ten para’s worth of hiç! he cried, and ran. He reached the grocer.
He had ten para’s worth of hiç weighed out and ran straight home. His mother, waiting and waiting at home, had run out of patience and was quite beside herself. The moment Keloğlan came through the door:
– You wretched Keloğlan, you good-for-nothing Keloğlan, who knows where you have been off playing, she said, and beat him this way and that, and clapped a sheep’s stomach onto his bald head5 and sat him down in a corner.
Time passed, the ages turned, and that Keloğlan never ran out of tricks or games.
Three apples fell from the sky: one for me, one for the teller of the tale, and one to be held in trust by me for those who come after, of Keloğlan’s line.6
Translator’s Notes
- A variant of the standard Turkish tale-opening. Where many tales begin Bir varmış, bir yokmuş; evvel zaman içinde, kalbur saman içinde, this one runs Bir varmış, bir yokmuş. Tanrının kulu çokmuş. Çok yemesi, yok demesi günahmış — a rhyming preamble whose sense is loose and whose function is musical: it marks the passage out of ordinary time. The rhyme is lost in English. ↩
- Keloğlan literally means “bald boy” (kel = bald, oğlan = boy). He is the best-known stock figure of Turkish folk narrative: poor, bald, apparently simple, and the hero of a very large cycle of tales. In some he outwits kings and giants; in others, like this one, the joke is on him. The name is kept untranslated because it functions as a proper name. ↩
- Hiç in modern Turkish means “nothing, none at all.” In the older and regional usage this tale depends on, it was also a word for salt. The entire story turns on that double meaning: the mother sends her son for salt, and everyone who hears him repeating the word hears him saying “nothing, nothing” — which is why the fishermen’s nets come up empty. No English word carries both senses, so hiç has been left in Turkish throughout. ↩
- Hay hak is the rhythmic call used by fishermen hauling a net in unison, of the same family as English “heave ho.” It is kept in the original because it is a sound, not a statement — and because its rhythm is what Keloğlan’s muttering cuts across. ↩
- The Turkish is işkembe, the stomach of a sheep or cow. Clapping one onto a boy’s shaved head is a stock comic humiliation in these tales rather than anything the audience was meant to take as ordinary domestic practice. ↩
- The standard closing formula of a Turkish tale: Gökten üç elma düştü — “three apples fell from the sky.” The three are conventionally shared out among the teller, the listener, and a third party who varies from teller to teller; the version here gives the third apple to Keloğlan’s descendants. It functions as a bow at the end of a performance. ↩
Source
Dursun, Aysun. Keloğlan Masallarının Tespiti ve Tasnifi. Master’s thesis, Muğla University, August 2008. Supervisor: Yrd. Doç. Dr. M. Naci Önal.
Translated from the Turkish. The Turkish original is published in this archive as Keloğlan Hiç Alıyor (Anadolu Masalı).