Seongju Puri
Unknown (Southern Oral Tradition)
Region
Gyeongsang
Genre
Usage
Southern Folk Song
Recreational Song
Seongju Puri is a folk song drawn from the Seongju-gut, the ritual honoring Seongju, the god who protects the home, and it is widely sung across southern Korea. Its answering refrain, "Era mansu, era daesin," and the bright gutgeori rhythm turn a household's prayer for blessings into a joyful song. This record is archive material collected to organize and preserve the representative lyrics and the transmission context of Seongju Puri.
Commentary & Notes
Era mansu, era daesin: A refrain calling on "long life" (萬壽) and "the great god" (大神), praying that Seongju will descend and watch over the household.
The pine seeds of Jebiwon: Pine seeds gathered at Jebiwon in Andong grow into the timber that builds a house, a passage straight from the Seongju ritual that traces every home's origin to the house god.
Sung to the gutgeori rhythm in a melody close to the Gyeonggi style, the song alternates a lead verse with an answering refrain.
Cultural Background
Seongju Puri appears to have begun as the blessing chant that traveling performers sang at house-god rituals in southern Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, and Jeolla, before spreading widely through Gyeongsang as a folk song. As it became a popular song, it gathered many new verses reflecting ordinary people's feelings, the best known of which reflects on the brevity of life: "Ten li outside Luoyang, those graves high and low…"
Lyrics
에라 만수 에라 대신이야
대활연으로 서리서리 내리소서
성주야 성주로다
성주 근본이 어데메냐
경상도 안동땅에
제비원이 본이로다
제비원에 솔씨를 받아
소평 대평에 던졌더니
Era mansu, era daesin!
Come down in all your glory, coil upon coil
O Seongju, it is Seongju!
Where does Seongju have his roots?
In the land of Andong, Gyeongsang Province,
Jebiwon is where he comes from
We gathered pine seeds at Jebiwon
and scattered them over the small plain and the great plain
