In 1995, Barbara Haggh identified the plainchant source of the unusual motet tenor, DECANTATUR, in an Office responsory for St Elizabeth of Hungary. Haggh drew attention to the use of the tenor in a highly unusual hagiographical motet for Elizabeth, Un chant renvoisie/DECANTATUR. Yet the appearance of the DECANTATUR melody as the tenor of one other thirteenth-century motet, Amis vostre demoree/PRO PATRIBUS (where its chant is wrongly labelled) has not been properly investigated. Although this motet makes no direct reference to St Elizabeth, it uses a refrain citation derived from a vernacular chanson, unusually in the female voice. Vernacular refrains are considered here from a new perspective, as agents of meaning and intertextuality. I also explore the potential for refrains to signify and embody song and gendered acts of singing. I propose that semantic, as well as musical, connections may exist between thirteenth-century motets and songs, linked through the use of particular tenor melismas and/or refrain citations. This engages with a wider musicological and literary debate about the validity of interpreting subtle meaning and allegory in vernacular motets.