Page:History of Oregon Literature.djvu/33

 experiences involved the conferring of one or more concomitant songs. These dream-origin songs, when they possess words, are of symbolic or poetic-literary flavor when contrasted with the relative matter-of-factness of myth narrative or ordinary everyday speech. They are sung often in privacy, and in public only in the winter power dances called "dream dances." These privately-owned and individually-sung songs are usually very short. Frequently they are no more than one-line poems set to a melody.

One power-dream song I noted is crudely translated thus:

I could not learn from my informant what the animal or other guardian-spirit power that conferred this song could be.

The following words are from a dream-power song used by a miluk-Coos female shaman when doctoring:

This shaman's curing power, expressed via the song, was a type of large snipe.

Though perhaps not originally dreamed, the poetic inter est of the following song, a love plaint devised by a living woman, justifies its inclusion here:

At this stage of my Coos research I see no warrant to assume a casual relation between dreams and subsequent folktale narrative style or content. The fok tales must be ancient things, the distribution of their component episodes and plots over large areas of America being a matter of