Lorelei

Lorelei, or LURLEI (lei = slate-rock), a rock which rises perpendicularly from the Rhine, to the height of 427 feet, near St Goar. It used to be dangerous to boatmen, and has a celebrated echo. But the name is best known from Heine's song of the siren who sits on the rock combing her long tresses, and singing so ravishingly that the boatmen, enchanted by the music of her voice, forget their duty, and are drawn upon the rock and perish. The legend is not, however, 'a märchen of olden days'; the first form of it was an invention of Clemens Brentano, published in his ballad 'Zu Bacharach am Rheine wohnt eine Zanberin' (1800). It soon passed into a popular legend, and has suggested several variants to modern German poets. See Leimbach, Die Lorelei-Dichtungen (1879).