The refrain's importance to late medieval poetics is clear. The question of its origin, however, has been a topic of dispute. Refrains normally function as quotations, yet medieval composers and poets almost never cite the author or source of a given refrain; the point of origin of refrains is thus largely unknown. The earliest accounts of refrain usage appeared in the literary histories of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century romance philologists, scholars who sought to locate the origins of French literature and language. Several of these scholars believed that the surviving corpus of refrains represented a compendium of quotations drawn from a repertory of orally transmitted songs that had since been lost. The German philologist Karl Bartsch, writing in 1870, insisted that refrains could provide a “contribution to the history of folksong, and accurately reflect, in their manifold nature, the character of the people.” Similarly convinced of their ability to conjure up a long forgotten oral culture, French philologist Alfred Jeanroy would later describe refrains as “the last echo of a monophonic poetic folk tradition, permanently lost to us.”

Jeanroy's account posited the refrain as the vestige of a song genre called the rondet de carole. A short monophonic song composed of a brief verse and a refrain, the rondet de carole was initially orally transmitted and may have been used to accompany round dances. The earliest examples of the rondet de carole tradition occur in narrative romances with lyric interpolations such as Jean Renart's Roman de la Rose, where they accompany round dances.