The Walled-Up Wife: A Casebook

The Walled-Up Wife: A Casebook. Edited by Alan Dundes. Wisconsin and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. 210pp. 13.50 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0 299 15074 7

These essays concern a fine ballad, variants of which are famous in various Balkan countries, in Greece, and in India, but which has no equivalent in the ballad corpus of Western Europe. A mason (or group of masons) is building a superb bridge or monastery or (in India) digging a well; to save the work from destruction by supernatural forces, the mason's wife has to be built alive into the fabric; the mason carries out the sacrifice, then kills himself. In India, the wife goes consciously to her death; elsewhere, she is tricked.

This selection of material, ranging from 1815 to the present day, illustrates several persistent trends in folklore scholarship. There are nationalistic claims that one version takes priority over others as recording what "really" happened and where, the rest being mere imitations and relocalisations; this dispute, fuelled by political and cultural rivalries, was prolonged and intense--and futile, as Professor Dundes points out, since the disputants were unaware of the existence of Indian analogues which extend the problem of origin and diffusion far beyond the Balkans. There is the survivalist quest for primitive magico-religious origins, which in this case is more convincing than usual, since the concept of "foundation sacrifice" is plainly relevant to the story; it is argued here by Paul G. Brewster, in a paper which also discusses "London Bridge" and other children's games.

Other essays explore possible inner meanings to the story. Mircea Eliade sees it as a cosmological myth; Giraddi Govindaraja protests at its moral injustice; Kristivoj Kotur and Zora Zimmermann both stress the moral value of sacrificial suffering by the innocent; Ruth Mandel sees the woman as occupying a liminal position between nature/ culture, insiders/outsiders, living/dead, and thus vulnerable to men's power and control; Lyubomira Parpulova-Gribble relates her fate to rituals of separation and incorporation accompanying marriage and the birth of the first child in Bulgarian custom.

In the final paper, Professor Dundes warns that it is never wise to claim a single monolithic interpretation for an item of folklore; at the very least, there will be a male and a female perspective on its meaning, and different performers (and audiences) will react to the one or to the other. From the woman's angle, immurement is a metaphor for loss of freedom in marriage; from the man's, it shows that "the sad reality is that male hubris brings only death to the female."

As ever, the choice of material for the casebook is varied and stimulating, and reading it is both enjoyable and instructive.

Jacqueline Simpson, Folklore Society

COPYRIGHT 1999 Folklore Society
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