The Abandoned Princess Who Guides the Dead
No chronicle records the story of Princess Bari; it survives in performance, as a shamanic narrative song for the dead sung through the night at the jinogwi-gut of the Seoul region and the ssitgim-gut of the southern coast. King Ogu fathered six princesses in a row; diviners promised the seventh child would be a son, but a girl was born. The enraged king sealed the infant in a jade casket and cast her away, into a river or the wilds depending on the version, which earned her the name Baridegi, the abandoned one. A pious old couple drew her out and raised her.
Years later the king and queen fell mortally ill, and only medicinal water from the land beyond the western sky could save them. Each of the six pampered princesses made excuses; the foundling, sought out and restored, put on men's clothes and set off alone. In the western land she served Mujangseung, keeper of the water: three years hauling water, three tending fires, three cutting wood, and after the nine years married him and bore seven sons before receiving the water of life and the flowers that restore flesh and bone. On the road home she met her parents' funeral procession, halted the biers, revived their bodies with the flowers and their breath with the water.
Offered half the kingdom, she declined, asking instead to guide the souls of the dead. As the goddess Ogu she is honored as the ancestress of all shamans, and the dead cross their bridge along the road she points out. Dozens of regional versions have been transcribed; the Seoul text recorded by Akamatsu and Akiba in 1937 is among the earliest full scholarly records. In 2007 Hwang Sok-yong's novel Baridegi recast the abandoned girl as a North Korean refugee.
