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.


[98] Hermann Seeliger says (p. 73): "Zu den Bearbeitungen, die sich an
die Ballade von Brentano anlehnen, gehören die Dichtungen von
Geibel, Mohr, Roquette, Hillemacher, Fiebach und Sommer." Seeliger
wrote his study for musicians, and his statement may be correct.

[99] Aside from the treatises on the Lorelei already mentioned, there
are the following: _Zu Heines Balladen und Romanzen_, by
Oskar Netoliczka, Kronstadt, 1891; this study does not treat the