Whore Brentano sowed, many have reaped. Since the publication of his _Godwi_, about sixty-five _Loreleidichtungen_[75] have been written in German, the most important being those by Brentano (1810-16), Niklas Vogt[76] (1811), Eichendorff (_ca._ 1812), Loeben (1821), Heine (1823), Simrock (1837, 1840), Otto Ludwig (1838), Geibel (1834, 1846), W. Müller von Königswinter (1851), Carmen Sylva, (_ca._ 1885), A. L'Arronge (1886), Julius Wolff (1886), and Otto Roquette (1889). In addition[77] to these, the story has been retold[78] many times, with slight alterations of the "original" versions, by compilers of chrestomathies, and parodies have been written on it. There is hardly a conceivable interpretation that has not been placed upon the legend.[79] The Lorelei has been made by some the evil spirit that entices men into hazardous games of chance, by others, she is the lofty incarnation of a desire to live and be blessed with the love that knows no turning away. The story has also wandered to Italy, France, England, Scotland, Scandinavia, and the United States,[80] and the heroine has proved a grateful theme for painters and sculptors. Of the epic works, that by Julius Wolff is of interest because of the popularity it has enjoyed. First published in 1886, it had reached the forty-sixth thousand in 1898. Of the dramas that by L'Arronge should be valuable, but it has apparently never been published; nor has Otto Ludwig's operatic fragment,[81] unless recently. Aside from Geibel, Otto Roquette is the most interesting librettist. Of the forty-odd (there were forty-two in 1898) composers of Heine's ballad, the greatest are Schumann, Raff, and Liszt, and in this case Friedrich Sucher,[82] who married the ballad to its now undivorceable melody. Though Brentano created[83] the story of his ballad, he located it in a region rich in legendary material, and it was the echo-motif of which he made especial use, and traces of this can be found in German literature as early as the thirteenth century.[84] The first real poet to borrow from Brentano was Eichendorff,[85] in whose _Ahnung und Gegenwart_ we have the poem since published separately under the title of "Waldgespräch," and familiar to many through Schumann's composition.[86] That Eichendorff's Lorelei operates the forest is only to be expected of the author of so many _Waldlieder_. Even if Heine had known it he could have borrowed nothing from it except the name of his heroine.[87]