Note 717 — Chapter V · THE DIFFERENCING ELEMENTS OF COMMUNAL POETRY (continued 2)

The doctor complaining that he never could get an Erse song explained, was told “the chorus was generally unmeaning,” which, of course, would point to a predominance of the refrain; Johnson himself slyly quoted an unintelligible refrain from an old English ballad. Hill’s Boswell, V. 274.