Hi Merry-- The variant you've got was recorded by Cilla Fisher (sister to Archie and Ray-- Fisher family is well-known in Scottish folk music circles) and her husband Artie back in the 80's. Her sister Ray got a lot of songs directly from Jeannie Robertson, the famous tinker ballad singer who was extensively recorded back in the 50's and 60's. (Caedmon, a British outfit, did a whole series of recordings of tinkers, farmers and ordinary folk singing the old ballads back then, and The School of Scottish studies has archives too.) I'm pretty sure this was one of Jeannie's songs. So the chorus could be "cant", which is tinker language. There's a whole genre of songs we almost never hear in this country that are "cant" songs-- they can be in Romany (the language of the gypsies) or can involve other words that are a sort of secret language spoken amongst the tinkers/gypsies/traveling people when they don't want to be understood by non-tinkers. If you just have to know for sure I'd try to find a copy of the Caedmon recordings-- a good university music library should have them if they have a folklore department--- I know the series included extensive liner notes.