Sucher,[82] who married the ballad to its now undivorceable melody.

Though Brentano created[83] the story of his ballad, he located it in
a region rich in legendary material, and it was the echo-motif of
which he made especial use, and traces of this can be found in German
literature as early as the thirteenth century.[84] The first real poet
to borrow from Brentano was Eichendorff,[85] in whose _Ahnung und
Gegenwart_ we have the poem since published separately under the title
of "Waldgespräch," and familiar to many through Schumann's
composition.[86] That Eichendorff's Lorelei operates the forest is
only to be expected of the author of so many _Waldlieder_. Even if
Heine had known it he could have borrowed nothing from it except the
name of his heroine.[87]

As to Loeben's saga, there can be but little doubt that he derived his
initial inspiration from Schreiber, with whom he became intimately
acquainted[88] at Heidelberg during the winter of 1807-8. This, of
course, is not to say that Heine borrowed from Loeben. Indeed, one of
the strongest proofs that Heine borrowed from Schreiber rather than
from Loeben is the clarity and brevity, ease and poetry of Schreiber's
saga as over against the obscurity and diffuseness, clumsiness and
woodenness of Loeben's saga,[89] the plot of which, so far as the
action is concerned, is as follows: Hugbert von Stahleck, the son of
the Palsgrave, falls in love with the Lorelei and rows out in the
night to her seat by the Rhine. In landing, he falls into the stream,
the Lorelei dives after him and brings him to the surface. The old
Palsgrave has, in the meanwhile, sent a knight and two servants to
capture the Lorelei. They climb the lofty rock and hang a stone around
the enchantress' neck, when she voluntarily leaps from the cliff into
the Rhine below and is drowned.