are about that, or whether you are hurt or
not. It's because she has no heart, being all a wild water."[8]

Treacherous, beautiful, remorseless, that is how men regard the sea
and the rushing rivers, of whom the sirens and mermaids of old
tradition have come to stand as symbols. Treacherous and pitiless, yet
with a fascination that can draw even the moon and the stars to her
breast:

"Once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,
To hear the sea-maid's music."

Shakespeare.

Very many are the stories of the women of the sea and of the rivers,
but that one who must forever hold her own, because Heine has
immortalised her in song, is the river maiden of the Rhine--the
Lorelei.

Near St. Goar, there rises out of the waters of the Rhine a
perpendicular rock, some four hundred feet high. Many a boatman in
bygone days there met his death, and the echo which it possesses is
still a mournful one. Those who know the great river, under which lies
hid the treasure of the Nibelungs, with its "gleaming towns by the
river-side and the green vineyards combed along the hills," and who
have felt the romance of the rugged crags, crowned by ruined castles,
that stand like fantastic and very ancient sentries to guard its
channel, can well understand how easy of belief was the legend of the
Lorelei.

Down the green waters came the boatman's frail craft, ever drawing
nearer to the perilous rock. All his care and all his skill were
required to avert a very visible danger. But high above him, from the
rock round which the swirling eddies splashed and foamed, there came a
voice.

"Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together."

And when the boatman looked up at the sound of such sweet music, he
beheld a maiden more fair than any he had ever dreamed of. On the rock
she sat, combing her long golden hair with a comb of red gold. Her
limbs were white as foam and her eyes green like the emerald green of
the rushing river. And her red lips smiled on him and her arms were
held out to him in welcome, and the sound of her song thrilled through
the heart of him who listened, and her eyes drew his soul to her arms.

Forgotten was all peril. The rushing stream seized the little boat
and did with it as it willed. And while