King asleep in mountain

For other uses, see Mountain King.

The king asleep in mountain (D 1960.2 in Stith Thompson's motif index system)[1] is a prominent folklore trope found in many folktales and legends. Thompson termed it as the Kyffhäuser type.[2] Some other designations are king in the mountain, king under the mountain, sleeping hero, or Bergentrückung ("mountain rapture").

Statue of Ogier the Dane in Kronborg Castle. Ogier is said to sleep in the castle, his beard grown down to the floor, until some day when the country of Denmark is in peril.

Examples include the legends of King Arthur, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Charlemagne, Ogier the Dane, King David, Frederick Barbarossa at Kyffhäuser, Genghis Khan, Constantine XI Palaiologos, Kraljević Marko, Sebastian of Portugal and King Matjaž.[3][4][5]

The motifs A 571[clarification needed] "Cultural hero asleep in mountain", and E 502, "The Sleeping Army" are similar and can occur in the same tale.[1] A related motif is the "Seven Sleepers" (D 1960.1,[2] also known as the "Rip Van Winkle" motif), whose type tale is the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (AT tale type 766).

  1. ^ a b Ó hÓgáin (1991), p. 197.
  2. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference thompson was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Ó hÓgáin (2000), p. 92.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference henken was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Šmitek, Zmago. 1999. “The Image of the Real World and the World Beyond in the Slovene Folk Tradition". Studia Mythologica Slavica 2 (May). Ljubljana, Slovenija. pp. 178-179. https://doi.org/10.3986/sms.v2i0.1848.