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 .