[29] He had
finished the novel early in 1799--he was then twenty-one years old.
Wieland was instrumental in securing a publisher.[30] Near the close
of the second volume, Violette sings the song beginning:
Zu Bacharach am Rheine
Wohnt eine Zauberin.
That this now well-known ballad of the Lorelei was invented by
Brentano is proved, not so much by his own statement to that effect as
by the fact that the erudite and diligent Grimm brothers, the friends
of Brentano, did not include the Lorelei-legend in their collection of
_579 Deutsche Sagen_, 1816. The name of his heroine Brentano took from
the famous echo-rock near St. Goar, with which locality he became
thoroughly familiar during the years 1780-89. No romanticist knew the
Rhine better or loved it more than Brentano. "Lore" means[31] a small,
squinting elf; and is connected with the verb "lauern." The oldest
form of the word is found in the _Codex Annales Fuldenses_, which goes
back to the year 858, and was first applied to the region around the
modern Kempten near Bingen. "Lei" means a rock; "Loreley" means then
"Elbfels." And what Brentano and his followers have done is to apply
the name of a place to a person.
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