Bari Gongju

A song for the dead

The story of Princess Bari is a muga, a shamanic narrative song, sung by Korean shamans in rites for the dead such as the Seoul jinogwi-gut and the east-coast ogu-gut, where the shaman guides the soul of the dead to the other world as Bari did. It exists in many dozens of recorded versions; one of the first to be written down was recorded from a Seoul shaman and published by Akiba Takashi and Akamatsu Chijō in 1937, and the folklorist Kim Tae-gon later recorded many more.

The story

In a common version, King Ogu marries Queen Gildae in an inauspicious year, as a fortune-teller had warned, and they have only daughters. When the seventh daughter is born, the king in anger has her cast away in a jade box into the water. She is rescued and raised by an old couple, or in some versions protected by the Buddha or by animals. Years later the king and queen fall mortally ill, and learn that only medicinal water from the Western Heaven can save them. The six elder daughters refuse. Bari, found and summoned, agrees to go, repaying the debt of her birth if not of her upbringing.

The journey and the return

Dressed as a man, she crosses mountains, rivers, and hells, sometimes helped by the Buddha. At the source of the water, its guardian demands years of labor: drawing water, cutting firewood, and tending fire, and in many versions he marries her and she bears him seven sons. At last she returns with the water and the flowers that restore bone, flesh, and breath, and meets her parents' funeral procession. She revives them. Offered wealth and half the kingdom, she asks instead to become the one who guides the dead, and she is honored as the ancestor of shamans.

Meaning

The story reverses the Confucian preference for sons: the rejected daughter alone fulfills filial duty. It is one of the best-known Korean myths and has been retold in modern novels, plays, and music.