Fairy Tales and Legends
from Uçhisar and Cappadocia

Memories of the Old Villagers

Fairy Tales, Legends and The Stories of their Lives

Who has not sat in front of their grandparents, quietly
listening to their stories or tales of times gone by?
As children, we always accepted these stories as true,
and often we imagined ourselves to be the
beautiful princess in the tale or the great warrior
in a battle.

Becoming older and more practical, we smile
at the same stories.  But now we have doubts about
their substance and try to imagine how the
reality might have been. 

The lives of the older Uçhisar villagers,
men and women, were overshadowed by hard times
and the deaths of loved ones, and their memories
and stories reflect their pain and suffering.

When telling me their memories, however, they
would smile, and somehow I felt their pride to have
overcome all of this.

Now, in old age, they might suffer from various ailments
associated with their years, but they have not lost their faith or their spirit.
Listen to the words of these villagers, their stories of what they have
experienced in the past. There are happy as well as sad stories and maybe sometimes, with the passage of time,
truth and fiction melt into one another.

You can judge for yourself…

While I was still collecting these stories, one of the narrators,
Süleyman Bey, died during a cold cappadocian winter.
He was loved and respected by everybody.
Hacı Baba, as he was called in the village, died at the age of 81.
In the meantime, more of those people I sat together with have left us. 
...the oblivion started already.

Remark by
Evelyn Kopp, Author of the Book

Uchisar Unfolding - Unveil the secrets of a Cappadocian Village