I didn’t really understand this story until I read some other people’s bogs to close the gaps on the pieces I couldn’t understand. What I think the plot tells us is that The Erl-King is this man who lives out in the woods and he captures young girls and takes their virginity. They are then turned into birds and kept in a cage, singing, trying to get out and go back to life before the Erl-King. The narrator is a girl who is his next captive, however, she figures out this schemes. She ends up killing him, waiting for the young girls in the cage to come back to life for revenge on him.
The fiddle I think represents the Erl-King. When an instrument needs to be re-strung or tuned, it is because it is decaying from what it used to be. Same with the Erl-King. He is losing some of his suave that he used to use to seduce girls. Now it is apparent to the narrator of who the Erl-King is and who he used to be and it becomes the death of him.
