I believe Donovan wrote this song as a metaphor of the events of the holocaust. The calf in the wagon represents a Jewish person, the swallow as the non-Jewish Aryan, the wind as the Nazi soldiers, and as a side-note, the farmer is the slave driver sending the calf to the market (gas camps) for slaughter.
I believe Donovan wrote this song as a metaphor of the events of the holocaust. The calf in the wagon represents a Jewish person, the swallow as the non-Jewish Aryan, the wind as the Nazi soldiers, and as a side-note, the farmer is the slave driver sending the calf to the market (gas camps) for slaughter.