A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

Overview

Ishanashte’s Buying a Dream presents a senior chief who demands the other chiefs’ dreams and buries one up to his neck for refusing to speak. The junior chief has actually forgotten his dream and fears admitting this. A kindly privy god frees him at night and explains that the forgetting was deliberate protection: otherwise the powerful chief would have bought the beneficial dream. The god rewards the man’s care in keeping the privy and its surroundings clean. This is a source-specific account of divine protection, not a claim that the English label supplies the deity’s indigenous personal name.

The god then leads him to the house of the badger-goddess that he had seen in the dream. She gives him fine clothes and instructs him to attribute his rescue falsely to the god of door-posts. When the senior chief has himself buried in expectation of the same gifts, he dies instead. The privy god’s actual rescue must therefore be distinguished from the door-post god’s supposed intervention, which is explicitly part of the deception. Chamberlain’s1888 edition labels the story a reconstruction from memory of Ishanashte’s telling on16 November1886, not a verbatim Ainu transcript.

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Origins & earliest records

Ishanashte of Shumunkot, through Chamberlain’s identified1886 collection and1888 English publication.

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Records & interpretation

Complete named tale reread; explicit memory-reconstruction label and narrator/date retained.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    Aino Folk-Tales

    Basil Hall Chamberlain, collector and English translator; narrative by Ishanashte · 1888

    xxxviii, Buying a Dream, pp.44–46; Ishanashte,16 November1886; written down from memory; Folk-Lore Society XXII. Transcription page markers, not independent scan collation.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

Primary records and illustrations

Complete tale reread, named narrator/date/memory label and relevant introduction qualifications checked.

Aino Folk-Tales

Folk-Lore Society XXII,1888. xxxviii, Buying a Dream, pp.44–46; Ishanashte,16 November1886; written down from memory

Cache chamberlain-aino-38.txt and master chamberlain-aino.html. Actual privy-god intervention distinct fabricateddoorpostclaim; pinegoddess distinct bearformgoddess. Native-language text not independently collated.

Inspect the digitized plate · Source collection manifest

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

  1. Attributed historical English narrative recordAino Folk-Tales — xxxviii, Buying a Dream, pp.44–46; Ishanashte,16 November1886; written down from memoryResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

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