@alonso - Eastern Europe also has tales of water sprites -...

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    @alonso - Eastern Europe also has tales of water sprites - 'Rusalka' by Smetana - they were unclean spirits living in water seducing humans.

    in German they were called: 'Nixen' (sing: Nixe, plural: Nixen) and the one on the Rhein was called 'Lorelei' - and there is a song about her too:

    'Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
    dass ich so traurig bin
    ein Märchen aus uralten Zeiten,
    das geht mir nicht aus dem Sinn."

    I don't know what the meaning is
    that I am so sad
    a tale from ancient times
    keeps going round in my head etc. etc.

    Good on you for learning a foreign language - it is supposed to improve one's intelligence - definitely good for the memory, even though you may have forgotten most of your early learning.
    I watch Netflix videos in French with the French subtitles -
    don't know about the German ones, as they talk too fast and often the modern really quick speech with lots of new colloquialisms, but careful selection should give some good results.

    Of course there are the usual number of joke poems in the funniest German dialects about the Lorelei, where a family: father, mother and children are on the boat trip and 'Daddy' is all caught up in gazing at the watery maiden on the rock - eventually they all sink and drown

    Of course if you are into 'Tiefenpsychologie' here are some essays to the meaning of man's romantic longing for love and death

    http://www.jhelbach.de/lorelei/loredeu.htm

    Being a fan of the EU - I'll give you the link to the French singer Mireille Mathieu singing this German song:


    Tschüss and Ciao
    Taurisk



 
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