As water cascades down the moonlit waterfall, the Water Sprite plays a melancholy tune on his fiddle. He was at once a frightening and a mesmerising figure, who lured people into the depths with his music. The artists of National Romanticism were fascinated by traditional peasant folklore. Josephson listened to folk songs and wrote his own poems. To him, the Water Sprite was an alter ego – the misunderstood bohemian trying to go his own way.