King asleep in the mountain

Uncommon card · No. 131308

The king asleep in the mountain (D 1960.2 in Stith Thompson's motif-index) is a trope commonly found in folklore and legends. Thompson termed it as the Kyffhäuser type. Some other designations are king in the mountain, king under the mountain, sleeping hero, or Bergentrückung (German for "mountain rapture"). Examples include the legends of King Arthur, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Charlemagne, Ogier the Dane, King David, Frederick Barbarossa at Kyffhäuser, Falanto of Taranto, Genghis Khan, Constantine XI Palaiologos, Kraljević Marko, Sebastian of Portugal and King Matjaž. Nero is also an example. The Thompson motif entries A 571, "Cultural hero asleep in mountain", and E 502, "The Sleeping Army", are similar and can occur in the same tale. A related motif is the "Seven Sleepers" (D 1960.1, also known as the "Rip Van Winkle" motif), whose type tale is the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (AT tale type 766).

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