The word is difficult to make out; largely, I suspect, because Mr Ford didn't know what it was supposed to be and just sang what he remembered it as having sounded like. That happens a lot with this song, so that singers will have it as "gallilee", "revillie", "sugarlee" and all manner of things. It may well be that Mr Ford's word is a garbled form of "levantier", but he didn't actually sing that. Unless it was written down at the time, we'll never know what he thought it was.