In my opinion, this man in the middle ages was cursed by someone/thing for stealing ("You got eternity for takin' stock") and his curse was to be reborn every time aware of his past lives, and he's being living so for the past 700 years, and at the time he's singing this, it's 199-something, 700 hundred years after 1253.
The curse is that even though time passes, the people he knew back in the 13th century, mostly his friend Jerome and the girl he loves, are reborn as well, but they have no idea of that, and he's bound to relive all the same moments over and over ("With seven centuries of bitter memories", "Trust me, nothing ever moves but the dust", "Seven hundred years since I came here/You appear, same hair, same quizzical stare").
Now, because his love for his girl is kind of "eternal", he's always managed to be with her in every other past life with the exception of this one. She told him on the phone she didn't love him anymore and that it was over between the two of them ("Identified by the dying ring of her goodbye"). She fell in love with someone else, the "farmer's swain", and it's killing him ("You making love to someone else is more than I can take").
It's likely he killed her or him (because of all the "killer" references) and he confessed to Jerome ("what I verbalize he can see behind my eyes/The why oh why's that identify killer lullabies/And he surmised") and Jerome is probably driving him to the cops where he'll be put in jail ("home under steel skies") and he'll be sentenced to death by lethal injection ("I hate needles an' get twinges at the thought of syringes")
In my opinion, this man in the middle ages was cursed by someone/thing for stealing ("You got eternity for takin' stock") and his curse was to be reborn every time aware of his past lives, and he's being living so for the past 700 years, and at the time he's singing this, it's 199-something, 700 hundred years after 1253.
The curse is that even though time passes, the people he knew back in the 13th century, mostly his friend Jerome and the girl he loves, are reborn as well, but they have no idea of that, and he's bound to relive all the same moments over and over ("With seven centuries of bitter memories", "Trust me, nothing ever moves but the dust", "Seven hundred years since I came here/You appear, same hair, same quizzical stare").
Now, because his love for his girl is kind of "eternal", he's always managed to be with her in every other past life with the exception of this one. She told him on the phone she didn't love him anymore and that it was over between the two of them ("Identified by the dying ring of her goodbye"). She fell in love with someone else, the "farmer's swain", and it's killing him ("You making love to someone else is more than I can take").
It's likely he killed her or him (because of all the "killer" references) and he confessed to Jerome ("what I verbalize he can see behind my eyes/The why oh why's that identify killer lullabies/And he surmised") and Jerome is probably driving him to the cops where he'll be put in jail ("home under steel skies") and he'll be sentenced to death by lethal injection ("I hate needles an' get twinges at the thought of syringes")