The story concerns a cursed village that sank into the earth long ago and is permitted to appear for only one day every century.
The romantic tale ends with him leaving the vicinity just in time to avoid becoming entombed with the village and its denizens, but thereby being forever separated from his love.
The basic concept is an old German motif that appears in works of Mueller, Heine, Uhland and others.
The curse may affect a town, a castle or even a single house, but the narrative content remains largely unchanged.
[4][5] Lerner said that in his subsequent research, he found many other legends of disappearing towns in various countries' folklore, and he pronounced their similarities "unconscious coincidence".