St. Stephen

I say that the song is about sex. Look at all the in-and-out imagery, phallic imagery, and references to getting hard and then going down (limp).

1) Saint Stephen with a rose

The engorged male organ is pink; in medieval times, blushes and inflammations used to be referred to as a “rose”; confirm rosacea (a type of facial acne)

2) In and out of the garden he goes.

Obvious

3) Country garden in the wind and the rain

Similar to a million bad jokes about the location of the female organ between the excretory and urinary exits: “between mud and flood.”

4) Wherever he goes the people all complain.

Sex is controversial. People see sex in the open and they complain. So it has to be disguised in a buch of obligue song lyrics.

5) Wishing well with a golden bell, bucket hanging clear to hell, Hell halfway twixt now and then, Stephen fill it up and lower down and lower down again.

If the song were really about a bucket and a well, then the lyrics wouldn’t make sense: You don’t fill a bucket at the top and lower it; you fill it at the bottom and raise it. So instead, the well is the female organ (often maligned in medieval literature as the road to hell). Stephen fills the well up, and then he goes down (limp).

6) One man gathers what another man spills.

The Bible cautions against men spilling their seed via masturbation. So the song line says that some men retain and some spill (some are abstinent adn some indulge).

7) But what would be the answer to the answer man?

The biggest question in the world is, What’s the purpose of life? (“Lady finger, dipped in moonlight, writing "What for?" across the morning sky.”) Darwin and Freud answered it: To procreate. Species that are bent on procreation survive; those that aren’t don’t. So sex is its own answer, and Stephen is the “answer man”: “Sunlight splatters the dawn with answers, darkness shrugs and bids the day goodbye.” In other words, splatter your answer and be on your way.

8) Saint Stephen will remain, all he's lost he shall regain,

Stephen recuperates quickly. After sex, he just needs a little time to “regain what he’s lost”, and he’s ready to go again.

9) Fortune comes a crawlin', calliope woman, spinnin' that curious sense of your own.

Back to it, with a new woman delivered by Fortune. Confirm the earlier section about “Several seasons with their treasons, Wrap the babe in scarlet colors, call it your own.” The two sections make references to the fickleness and possessiveness of lust: You claim a woman as “your own” until the next morning, when you’re no longer so interested in her and already looking for the next “calliope woman,” i.e., parade of women on the merry-go-round of life.

10) And so on. Stuff like “Speeding arrow, sharp and narrow” and “washed by the suds and foam” should be obvious.