Abstract
In the Albanian folklore there are two ballads, where the motif of death prevails in particular: the ballad for the walled up wife and the ballad for the dead brother. Death as a sacrifice required by the entity itself appears in the ballad of the walled up wife and the death as an impossibility to fulfill the promise shown by the entity itself in the ballad for the dead brother. In fact in both the ballads, the death is seen as a special relation with the life, sometimes as a service to life, sometimes as a hindrance to it. There are two ways of the relation between the life and the death. The wife is walled up and goes from life to death in order to fulfill the prophecy, while the dead brother is temporarily resurrected and passes from death to life to keep the given promise.

Keywords
ballad, walled up wife, death, brother, variants.