Romantik_. Berlin, 1898, p. 2.

[31] Cf. Wilhelm Hertz, "Über den Namen Lorelei," _Sitzungsberichte
der k.b. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München_, Jahrgang
1886, pp. 217-51. For the etymologist, this is an invaluable
study.

[32] The superficial similarity of those two poems can easily be
exaggerated. The rhyme "sitzet-blitzet" is perfectly natural: the
Lorelei had to be portrayed as "sitzen"; what is then easier than
"blitzen"? In "Ritter Peter von Stauffenberg und die Meerfeye"
(Des Knaben Wunderhorn, ed. of Eduard Grisebach, p. 277) we have
this couplet:

Er sieht ein schönes Weib da sitzen.
Von Gold und Silber herrlich blitzen.

For more detailed illustrations, see below.

[33] It is worth while to note the actual date of Heine's composition
of his ballad, since so eminent an authority as Wilhelm Scherer
(_Ges. d. deut. Lit._, 8th ed., p. 662) says that Heine wrote the
poem in 1824. And Eduard Thorn (_Heinrich Heines Beziehungen zu
Clemens Brentano_, p. 90.) says that he published it in 1826.
This is incorrect, as is also Thorn's statement, p. 88, that
Brentano wrote his ballad in 1802. For the correct date of Heine's
ballad, see _Sämtliche Werke_, Hamburg, 1865, XV, 200.]

[34] An instance of this is seen in _Selections from Heine's
Poems_, edited by H.S. White, D.C. Heath & Co., Boston, 1900,