Dylan's "St. Augustine"

There has been alot of discussion about the Paul-is-Dead allusions in the song Saint Paul by Terry Knight.  The song was released May, 1969, before the extended PID discussions in the fall of that year.

Bob Dylan recorded a song called I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine for his John Wesley Harding album in 1967 that, I believe, is very much a PID (or Paul was injured) song.

Some background.  The Beatles and Dylan were admirers of each others' music before they first met in New York in September, 1964.  Later, they met up in London in May, 1965 when Dylan was playing there.  In 1966, they--and particularly Paul and Dylan--were together in London in May:
     May 2, 1966-- Paul, Dylan, and Neil Aspinall visited Dolly's Nightclub.
     May 3, 1966-- Paul and Dylan went to Blaise Nightclub to see John Lee Hooker's performance
     May 26, 1966-- Paul was at the Dylan concert at the Royal Albert Hall
     May 27, 1966-- Paul was at this Dylan concert also at the Royal Albert Hall and after the performance,
                               Paul, Neil Aspinall, Keith Richards and Brian Jones met Dylan at Dolly's Nightclub
     May 28, 1966-- Paul met Dylan at the Mayfair Hotel to hear pressing of Dylan's most recent studio
                               sessions.
     May 29, 1966-- He spent another day with Dylan.

Dylan had a motorcycle accident in the summer of 1966, and--according to one of the books I've read--wrote I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine while he was recuperating from the accident.

The relevant lyrics are:

     I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
     Alive as you or me.
     Tearing through these quarters
     In the utmost misery.
     With a blanket underneath his arm
     And a coat of solid gold:
     Searching for the very souls
     Whom already have been sold.
           .       .       .
     I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
     Alive with fiery breath.
     And I dreamed I was among the ones
     That put him out to death.
     Oh, I awoke in anger
     So alone and terrified:
     I put my fingers against the glass
     And bowed my head and cried.
    
  "St. Augustine" was carrying a blanket as he moved through the "quarters" which suggests a hospital setting.  His "coat of solid gold" could be suggesting that the man was rich or that he was covered in flames.  And that idea is reinforced by the line about his being "alive with fiery breath."  The second to last line about Dylan putting his "fingers against the glass" could be his visualizing the scene where "St. Augustine" died or was injured:  an automobile windshield or the "glass onion" top of a hyperbaric oxygen chamber? (See my post of May 7th. for a photo of the chamber.)

I read the Wikipedia interpretation of the song in their article about the John Wesley Harding album (at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki./John_Wesley_Harding_(album)  .  The writer said the opening couplet of the song paraphrases the song, I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night which was a folk song about a union organizer who was framed and executed for a murder.  The writer said the last line of St. Augustine was taken from Woody Guthrie's folk song, Ludlow Massacre, a song about violence at a strike by unionists in a Colorado mining town.  The important lyrics in this song are:

     That very night, you soldier waited
     Until us miners were asleep.
     You snuck around our little tent town
     Soaked our tents with your kerosene.
     You struck a match and the blaze it started . . .

Dylan is strongly suggesting in the song that St. Augustine was attacked deliberately.  If the song is about Paul, Dylan is saying he was killed--or severely injured in 1966.

[------Also suggesting a fiery "accident" was the Beatles' song, Revolution no. 9 played backward.  Hear the song at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG0wksBzKSc .  At 2:35-2:40, you hear the sound of fire crackling.  At 2:13-2:15 and 5:36-5:42, someone is screaming, "Get (or Let) me out!"  Also, at 5:19-5:20, the video poster interprets the talking as:  "I would say once the bed problems last long."  There are also car horns played intermittedly throughout the backmasked song.  The Vickers hyperbaric oxygen bed was nicknamed the Lotus bed (as I pointed out in my post of May 7th.) because it resembled that automobile.]