THE
LORELEY - LEGEND OF THE RHINE
The Siren Song of the Middle Rhine Gorge
The Lorelei or Loreley (as you will see both spellings) is called a rock, but it is actually a rocky mountainous promontory cliff on the eastern bank of the Rhine River, opposite the village of St Goar, in the section called the “Middle Rhine” or the Rhine Gorge, where Europe’s longest river flows from its origin in the Swiss Alps to the North Sea. The wide river used for navigation for centuries makes a hard curve around the Lorelei with shallows which were treacherous for the river boats making the passage, and many an unfortunate ship would founder. The name origin comes from two potential sources, the old Celtic meaning “murmuring rock” for the sound made from the shallows in heavy currents amplified by the opposite cliffs, or from old German “lurking rock” for the dangers it held. The two spellings are used, but in days of the German Empire in 1903 German words ending in a y were changed to an I, so Lorelei is the most correct, but old standards still linger, and Loreley has been more common in English.
The Lorelei gets it biggest fame from the legends of the mythical water nymph, whose siren song called the passing sailors to their doom on the rocky shallows. She was similar in legends to the siren who called to Ulysses in the Greek legends, and the Rhine Maidens (see Worms Nibelungenlied) of Norse mythology who guarded the Rhine Gold (Rheingold) which inspired Wagner to shape his operas, and from thence Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” (and all the movies), and inspired the popular German Song of the Siren or the “Lorelei Lied” from an 1824 poem by Heinrich Heine, “Die Lorelei” set to music by Friedrich Silcher. The Lorelei and the Middle Rhine came to wider European awareness from Lord Byron’s descriptions of the castle ruin strewn Rhine Gorge in the Third Canto of his “Childe Harold” travels, and the journal of the Shelleys in their “Six Months Tour” (Mary Shelley Frankenstein Memoirs). The Middle Rhine is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Motor ships have made the passage around the Lorelei a little less dangerous, and the murmur of the rock is harder to hear with the barges and cruise ships passing up and down the river day and freight trains rumbling along the rail track on the east bank. The Lorelei rock is hard to miss as a geologic feature for any traveler along the Rhine, whether by cruise ship (see KD Line Rhine Cruise), or by car (Car Rental in Europe). On the north side of the rock is now an artificial breakwater relieving the dangers of the old shallows, and marked by a statue of the Rhine Maiden on the spot, with her flowing hair covering her nakedness, where the legendary nymph was to reside.
Visiting the Loreley Statue
The statue and breakwater park is free to visit. can be reached by a walk of about 10 minutes along the breakwater, with a small parking area on the riverside road, where a marker stands designating the location along the winding river, to offer bearing to the lost travelers driving along the river between Rüdesheim (see Rüdesheimer Coffee) and Braubach. The statue and breakwater park are free.
If driving on the west shore of the river, which is the main Rhine Road (Rheinstrasse), a ferry crosses the Rhine River at St Goar to St Goarshausen, just below the castle Burg Katz, on the Rhine Embankment Road (Rheinuferstraße), then about a thousand yards south. If camping, there is a camping park above the Loreley, reached by the L388 Road behind Burg Katz, or across the river is the larger Loreleyblick campground. By Rhine cruise, there is no stop, and you'll just have to look as you pass, glad that you’re not likely to run a ground. The statue doesn’t sing. © Bargain
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See Also:
RHINE CASTLE HOTEL RHEINFELS - ST GOAR
