Aymush is the patron of sheep and of the pastoral wealth on which the mountain economy rested. Shepherds invoked him for the multiplication and safety of the flocks, and his cult is preserved in a song-legend that recounts how the guardian of the sheep was carried off, a narrative recited to secure the herd's fortune. He stands beside the labour-song numina of tillage and dairy, Erirey and Dolay, but his tie to the single most valued Karachay-Balkar animal gave him a fuller mythic story of his own.