Some notes:

- Regarding the female parish prison: I believe it also had a very large circular window, kind of like a sun just risen above the horizon.
- Having said that, there's still not much in favour of this explanation; it's merely a possibility that this was that house; just the ball and chain link it.
- All the more so because the common girl versions largely seem to me modified boy versions, "boy" to "girl" etc., with the exception of the rounder/gambler verses that have no female equivalent, resulting in two verses about "my brother/lover/sweetheart/daddy/father".
- However, where those two verses previously seemed to scream "boy version" to me, with the two verses of that travelling lover-version above I'm no longer as sure. They do indeed have the appearance of a completely seperate song that somehow got mixed-in.
- Interesting is that for "to wear your crown of gold." one would more logically substitute "to wear your golden chain", which would not sound much different from "to wear that ball an' chain".

And a few questions:
- The singer is not in New Orleans. Why? Where? And why will (s)he wear a ball and chain when returning in the final verse. The version with "my race is almost run" makes it sound like (s)he is running from the law but returns to the scene of the crime, either voluntarily or after being caught.
- The parent sews those new blue jeans. If this is about now ordinary blue jeans, when does that date that verse? Or if they weren't originally intended to either rhyme or identify a real world person - why were they mentioned in this song? Is or was there a prison or service uniform that uses them that would make them worth mentioning?
- I like the explanation of a Japanese house as such an establishment might have "The House of the Risin' Sun" as its proper name. Is the name "The land of the Rising Sun" for Japan old enough? A quick check on the net allows me to answer myself: This is the case, as it's the meaning of the name, though the native meaning is more "the origin of the sun". "The house of the (rising) sun" might even be considered a translation of the name Japan/Nippon itself.
- Did you know that in biology they have software that will look at the genetic differens between (sub)species, and from that reconstruct the most likely order of variation?
                                  Mysha