[88] Cf. Raimund Pissin's monograph, pp. 73-74.
[89] There are about two thousand words in Schreiber's saga, and about five thousand in Loeben's.
[90] It must be remembered that Schreiber's manuals are written in an attractive style: his purpose was not simply to instruct, but to entertain. And it was not simply the legends of the Rhine and its tributaries, but those of the whole of Western Germany that he wrote up with this end in view.
[91] Some minor details that Loeben, or Heine, had he known the Märchen in 1823, could have used are pointed out in Wilhelm Hertz's article, pp. 220-21.
[92] Cf. Görres' edition, pp. 94-108.
[93] Cf. ibid., pp. 128-40, and 228-44. It is in this
Märchen (p. 231) that Herzeleid sings Goethe's "Wer nie
sein Brod in Thränon asz."
[94] Cf. Görres' edition, pp. 247-57. There are a number of details in
this Märchen that remind strongly of Fouqué's Undine,
which Brentano knew.
[95] In his Die Märchen Clemens Brentanos, Köln, 1895, H. Cardauns gives an admirable study of Brentano's Märchen, covering the entire ground concerning the question whether Brentano's ballad was original and pointing out the sources and the value of his, Rheinmärchen. Cardauns comes to the only conclusion that can be reached: Brentano located his ballad in a region replete with legends, but there is no positive evidence that he did not wholly invent his own ballad. The story that Hermann Bender tells about having found an old MS dating back to the year 1650 and containing the essentials of Brentano's ballad collapses, for this MS cannot be produced, not even by Bender who claims to have found it. See Cardauns, pp. 60-67. Reinhold Steig reviewed Cardauns' book in Euphorion (1896, pp. 791-99) without taking in the question as to the originality of Brentano's ballad.
[96] P. 224.
[97] In Geibel's Gesammelte Werke, VI. 106-74, Geibel wrote the libretto for Felix Mendelssohn in 1846. Mendelssohn died before finishing it; Max Bruch completed the opera independently in 1863. It has also been set to music by two obscure composers. Karl Goedeke gives a very unsatisfactory discussion of the matter in Emanuel Geibel, Stuttgart, 1860. pp. 307 ff.