There is a genre of instrumental tunes called "doina" in Romania which are mostly dramatizations of a story about a shepherd who loses his sheep. The mode is always the one called "nikriz" in Turkish - dunno the Romanian word for it - DEFG#ABcd. They're not improvised, but each player has one of their own. Structure is always the same:

1. Slow sad piece about how the shepherd has lost his sheep.
2. Happy bit, he found his sheep!
3. Sad bit again, he was really looking at rocks and his sheep are still lost.
4. Happy bit, he really did find his sheep again!

This form was taken up by klezmer players in the 19th century but the explicit reference to sheep was dropped.