Johann Gottfried Herder, the theoretical firehead behind the Sturm and
Drang revolution, never grew tired of looking for `authentic and `natural
folk literature.  He collected (original and faked) folk songs in several
languages and translated a lot of them.  One of these songs was the
Danish ballad "Herr Oluf" where a bridegroom is killed by "Erlkonigs
Tochter".  The original text had the word "ellerkonge" which means "king
of the elves".  Herder thought that the Danish word "eller" (meaning
"elf") and the North German dialect word "eller" (meaning "alder") were
the same - and so Erlkonig was born.

Herder's poem has a lot of parallels to Goethe's text: Herr Oluf rides
late ("spat"), he sees elves dancing in the open ("Da tanzen die Elfen
auf grunem Land" - There the elves are dancing in the green countryside),
most of the poem is written in dialogue (here between Herr Oluf and
Erlkonig's daughter), Erlkonig's daughter is as importunate as her father
in the Goethe poem and as her father touches and deadly hurts the boy
in "Erlkonig" his daughter touches and deadly hurts Herr Oluf ("Sie tat
einen Schlag ihm auf sein Herz" - She hit his heart).  Herr Oluf rides
home (as does the father in the Goethe poem) and like the boy Herr Oluf
dies from being touched by the hand of an elf.  Herder's text has a far
more `authentic form than Goethe's poem: "Erlkonigs Tochter" is written
in twenty-one rhyming iambic two-line stanzas, he uses archaicly and
awkwardly sounding expressions, the lines vary extremely in length.
Goethe uses eight iambic four-line stanzas, there are no archaic
expressions, the poem does not sound awkward but rather powerful and
(paradoxically at the same time) elegant, there is no extreme variation
in line length.  Herder tried to write an `authentic folk song, Goethe
writes a Goethe poem which evokes an `authentic feeling of old lore and
folk mystery.

The poem begins with the narrator's worried question: who rides so late
through night and wind - remember that in Goethe's times the woods were
no good place to be in at night: no shelter, poor paths, wild animals,
gangs of outlaws.  We are given no explanation why the rider is there
in the woods at this uncomfortable time, we are simply told that he is
there - in an emergency situation.  The rider is "der Vater" (which
father?  no explanation, just the father) with his child.  This archetypical
figure does what we have every right to expect from him in this situation:
he cares for his son, giving him security.

Now the dialogue between father and son begins, interrupted by the
dialogue between the Erlkonig and the son, the narrator does not comment
the action till the last stanza.  Three times the son tells his father
about Erlkonig, three times the father tells his son that he is a victim
of delusion.  It is the very trick of the poem that we are not told who's
right of the two: is Erlkonig real and just invisible to the father's
eyes or is he just an halluzination of a sick child?  But by giving us
the whole dialogue between Erlkonig and the child Goethe pushes us into
an identification with the harassed boy.  The father is a distant and
distanced figure, he cannot hear what the boy and we hear, his attempts
to calm down the panicking child are helpless and sound cold, formal and
rational ("Mein Sohn" - "Sei ruhig, bleibe ruhig" - "Mein Sohn, mein
Sohn, ich seh es genau").  This adds to the feeling of despair the child
(and we!) feel: the Erlkonig getting more and more brutal, the father
no help at all.  When the father begins to show emotion, it is already
too late: only when the son cries out in anguish and pain the father
feels horror and begins to escape the haunted place.  But he cannot save
the child.

A nightmare.  No explanations, just a deadly attack of the wicked
and uncontrollable supernatural against helpless human beings, against
civilization, against us.  Is it a document of an (relatively) enlightened
society flirting with the dark side of the world and the soul?  Is it
masochism to delight in the identification with the helpless victim when
reading the poem and listening to Schubert's version?

R.