- Lorelei is also the name of a song by rock and roll band Styx (see Equinox, the album on which it first appeared), as well as a character in the Pokémon universe (see Lorelei (Pokémon)).
The Lorelei (originally written as Loreley) is a rock in the Rhine near St. Goar , which soars some 120 meters above the water line. It marks the narrowest part of the river between Switzerland and the North Sea. A very strong current and rocks below the waterline caused many boat accidents in former times.
The name comes from the ancient German words "luren" (look, lurk) and "ley" (rock). The translation of the name would therefore be: "rock from where to look out".
The rock is associated with several legendary tales. The tale appears in many forms, but is best known through a poem by Heinrich Heine that begins "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten" (which means in English, "I don't know what to make of it"). In the most common form of the story, the Lorelei rock is a maiden who threw herself into the Rhine in despair over a faithless lover, and became a siren whose voice lured fishermen to destruction.
A 13th-century legend entitled Der Marner says that the Nibelung treasure was hidden beneath the rock. The tale may be connected with the myth of Holda, queen of the elves. The queen supposedly sits combing her locks on the Hullenstein, and the man who sees her loses sight of reason, while he who listens is condemned to wander with her for ever. The legend, which Clemens Brentano claimed as his own invention when he wrote his poem "Zu Bacharach am Rheine" in his novel of Godwi (1802), bears all the marks of popular mythology. In the 19th century it formed material for a great number of songs, dramatic sketches, and operas, which are enumerated by Dr Hermann Seeliger in his Loreleysage in Dichtung und Musik (Leipzig-Reudnitz, 1898). The favourite poem with composers was Heine's, set to music by some twenty-five musicians, the settings by Friedrich Silcher (from an old folk-song) and by Liszt being the most famous.
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