Going back to the that Dylan song (Ballad in Plain D), yes it is over long, and too personal to him to be engaging enough for the rest of us. But surely it’s just one of his early parody songs, being based on the traditional The False Bride, which again is not that great lyrically.
The “chains of the skyway” verse is an updating of the ordinal’s “how many ships sail in the forest?”. Apart from Sandy Denny, didn’t the Oyster Band do a version called I Once Loved a Lass?