To those attentive to their hearing, the first indication of her approach is a haunting song of pain and passion. Sung in a strange tongue that nearly, but doesn't quite, make sense, the song reaches its crescendo when the singer comes into view, then fades away to be replaced with the soft shooshing of the wet hem of her dress dragging along the floor.

The woman is beautiful, but heartbreaking to behold: her eyes are red-rimmed and her cheeks are tear stained, and she carries herself with the air of the long-suffering. Her gold eyes survey the crowd a moment, her lips moving as if in practice before she speaks. "Why do they all leave me? I don't want to be alone."

((posted to Sages))

I cannot divine what it meaneth
This haunting nameless pain:
A tale of the bygone ages
Weeps brooding through my brain.

The faint air cools in the gloaming.
And peaceful flows the Rhine,
The thirsty summite are drinking
The sunset's flooding wine.

The loviest maiden is sitting
High - thrones in yon blue air,
Her golden jewels are shining
She combs her golden hair;

She combs with a comb that is golden,
And sings a weird refrain;
That steeps in a deadly enchantment
The listener's ravished brain.

The doomed in his drifting shallop
Is tranced with the sad sweet tone,
He sees not the yawning breakers.
He sees but the maid alone.

The pitiless billows engulf him!
So perish sailor and bark,
And this, with her baleful singing,
Is the Loreley's gruesome work.

Heinrich Heine, as translated by Mark Twain