Dievs is the supreme god of Latvian folk religion, a celestial father-figure whose name derives from the common Indo-European word for the bright daytime sky. In the dainas he is imagined less as a remote ruler than as an aristocratic farmer who rides or slides down the sloping heavenly hill in a grey homespun coat to walk among the rye and bless the herds. He shares the governance of human life with the goddesses Laima and Māra, the three together weighing the destiny apportioned to each child at birth. Under Christian influence the pagan Dievs was assimilated to the Christian God, yet the songs preserve an older, thoroughly agrarian and paternal figure who moves familiarly through the cultivated Latvian landscape.