Okay, I'm not a native English speaker - refrain means "chorus" to me for one thing.

I am familiar with the idea of mouth music - Brassens did some beautiful stuff like that, check "Brave

Margot", if you speak French.

The point with this chorus is that some of the words seem to be actual words, you could read:

"*With* his tooren-ooren *and* tan ee(?)"

and so on.

I have no clues for the "tooren". I kinda supposed it to be some ancient word/form; the first line of

the same song reads:

"A beggar man came o'er yon lea, seeking oot for charity" - yon lea? oot?

And later:

"For I had a dochter, ane o ma aine"

I can figure out "out" for "oot", "one" for "ane", "own" for "aine"... but I need the context.

On the other hand, I feel I'm being led to find a meaning in the chorus. It is not a mere chorus, the

song makes it clear that the guy is singing; in another version - number four - there is a dialogue with

the girl, her final line is "And we shall be merry and sing" (no tooren/tooroo/whatever in this version,

though the first verse ends with "Will you lodge a beggar man? Lassie to my *too row* ray").

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"The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is more than a tale, it's a myth. I might exagerate the importance of the link between the tale and the song(s), but the mythical element seems to be there - the old man enticing the child with his song. It has to be the beggar's song, or else we'd have to believe that young girls really go for "auld" beggars, wouldn't we? And if the magic is in the beggar's song, the words would be quite important, right?

So, I insist...