DAINAS. In Baltic cultures, the songs known in Latvian as dainas and in Lithuanian as dainos deal with two fundamental cycles, the life cycle of humans and the festival cycle of the agricultural seasons. Although they are often referred to by the common designation folk song, this modern term is misleading, for the dainas, with their trochaic and dactylic meters, differ from the folk songs known to European scholars. The original Lithuanian dainos have to a great extent disappeared because of the influence of the European folk song, but Latvian dainas have survived in great numbers. About sixty thousand (not including variants) have been collected and published by scholars. Their content reveals that they were an integral part of daily agrarian life among Baltic peoples; as such, they bear directly on Baltic religion.

Regarding the etymology of the term, Suniti Kumar Chatterji has pointed out that

the Baltic...