Another religious element, besides prayer, may have entered into the pre-Christian festival songs; and that is myth. A stage in the evolution of drama from the Dionysiac dithyramb was the introduction of mythical narratives about the wanderings and victories of the god, to be chanted or recited by the _choragus_. The relation of the _choragus_ to the _chorus_ bears a close analogy to that between the leader of the mediaeval _carole_ and his companions who sang the refrain. This leader probably represents the Keltic or Teutonic priest at the head of his band of worshippers; and one may suspect that in the north and west of Europe, as in Greece, the pauses of the festival dance provided the occasion on which the earliest strata of stories about the gods, the hieratic as distinguished from the literary myths, took shape. If so the development of divine myth was very closely parallel to that of heroic myth[559]. After religion, the commonest _motif_ of dance and song at the village festivals must have been love. This is quite in keeping with the amorous licence which was one of their characteristics. The goddess of the fertility of earth was also the goddess of the fertility of women. The ecclesiastical prohibitions lay particular stress upon the _orationes amatoriae_ and the _cantica turpia et luxuriosa_ which the women sang at the church doors, and only as love-songs can be interpreted the _winileodi_ forbidden to the inmates of convents by a capitulary of 789[560]. The love-interest continues to be prominent in the folk-song, or the minstrel song still in close relation to folk-song, of mediaeval and modern France. The beautiful wooing _chanson_ of _Transformations_, which savants have found it difficult to believe not to be a _supercherie_, is sung by harvesters and by lace-makers at the pillow[561]. That of _Marion_, an ironic expression of wifely submission, belongs to Shrove Tuesday[562]. These are modern, but the following, from the _Chansonnier de St. Germain_, may be a genuine mediaeval folk-song of Limousin _provenance_: ‘A l’entrada dal tems clar, eya, Per joja recomençar, eya, Et per jelos irritar, eya, Vol la regina mostrar Qu’el’ es si amoroza. Alavi’, alavia jelos, Laissaz nos, laissaz nos Ballar entre nos, entre nos[563].’ The ‘queen’ here is, of course, the festival queen or lady of the May, the _regina avrillosa_ of the Latin writers, _la reine_, _la mariée_, _l’épousée_, _la trimousette_ of popular custom[564]. The defiance of the _jelos_, and the desire of the queen and her maidens to dance alone, recall the conventional freedom of women from restraint in May, the month of their ancient sex-festival, and the month in which the mediaeval wife-beater still ran notable danger of a _chevauchée_.