Returning to the original enquiry: Robert said
> the consensus seems to be that all the choruses are so zersungen that they are beyond recovery.

Although John Stickle regarded the fragment that he knew as a bit of nonsense, and the Shetlanders who retained a much more complete version into the 1800s had probably long lost all understanding of the refrains, Child nevertheless printed a plausible reconstruction, with advice from Grundtvig, who surely had some knowledge of older languages related to his native Danish. That reconstruction does not contribute much sense to the story, but no more do many ballad refrains that consist of perfectly intelligible words.