Hi,

I've let all this roam about in my mind for a while:

- We have boy and girl verses;
- We have rounder verses;
- We have rather coarse rising sun verses;
- Some verses have apparently been sung around 1905;
- We have no lyrics source that predates the closing down of Storywille;
- We don't know the/which House of the Rising Sun.


Conjecture:

Rounder, the girl song, is the original that was already sung in 1905, which in reaction to the closing down of Storyville was parodied as the House of the Rising Sun, the rather coarse boy song, which became rather short when made acceptable for polite company and so adopted such Rounder verses as seemed to fit; once mixed, confusion allowed for several blended versions.

Rounder would then have been about a mother and daughter arguing about the girl's rounder love: Mother tells her he's no good, but daughter replies she would not stay in her mother's world.

House of the Rising Sun doesn't look like a real description; it's more like a collection of details common to any disreputable house; the name apparently had floated for at least a century, having been used by different houses, and the parody uses it to typify the house it describes.


No proof whatsoever; but then, the other explanations aren't based on much solid evidence either.

Bye
                                                                Mysha