Many of the threads to which I contribute (and occasionally ones I initiate) discuss Welsh traditional song. I think there has, at some point, been a discussion of the ox driving songs and their pre-christian animistic connections. Many Welsh love songs talk about using birds as "llatai" (messengers) to carry love notes to the objects of desire.

I know that you may be thinking of 'content' more than 'form' but there is a style of verse in Wales which runs along the lines, "if all the sea was black ink, and all the world was paper, and all the reeds were pens, then I could still not write of my love for you". There's actually quite a few religious verses on this line - the earliest example in Welsh is a Hymn to Mary. It's also found in England. In fact, one Welsh academic has written a piece on it being traceable across Europe and the middle East to India and a poem to Krishna, the Vasavadatta, written in Sanskrit about 2000 years ago. It might be interesting to pull together a list of European songs which use this pattern ...

On another front, I think it was Marius Barbeau in Canada who wrote about French Canadian songs and their French roots. Somewhere I've seen an article about these songs and how there are a lot of love songs - which you'd expect from raftsmen, Coureur de Bois and voyageurs who were a long way from home and womankind.   Worth a look.

sian