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Encyclopedia Britannica



ERLKONIG

This article appears in Volume V09, Page 749 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: EMS-EUD
ERLKONIG , or ERL-KING, a mythical
character
  in
modern
  German literature, represented as a gigantic bearded man with a golden crown and trailing garments, who carries children away to that undiscovered country where he himself abides. There is no such personage in ancient German mythology, and the name is linguistically nothing more than the perpetuation of a blunder. It first appeared in Herder's Stimmen der Volker (1778), where it is used in the
translation
  of the Danish song of the Elf-King's Daughter as equivalent to the Danish ellerkonge, or ellekonge, that is, elverkonge, the king of the elves; and the true German word would have been Elbkonig or Elbenkonig, afterwards used under the modified form of Elfenkonig by Wieland in his Oberon (1780). Herder was probably misled by the fact that the Danish word elle signifies not only elf, but also alder tree (Ger.
Erle
 ). His
mistake
  at any rate has been perpetuated by both
English
  and French translators, who speak of a " king of the alders;' " un roi des aunes," and find an explanation of the myth in the tree-
worship
  of early times, or in the vapoury emanations that hang like weird phantoms round the alder trees at night. The legend was adopted by Goethe as the subject of one of his finest
ballads
 , rendered
familiar
  to
English
  readers by the translations of
Lewis
  and Sir Walter Scott; and since then it has been treated as a musical theme by Reichardt and Schubert.


End of Article: ERLKONIG


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