King in The Mountain - Examples

Examples

A number of kings, rulers, fictional characters and religious figures have become attached to this story. They include:

• King Arthur (Great Britain)
• Merlin of the Arthurian legend, who is imprisoned in an oak tree by Nimue.
• Bran the Blessed (Wales)
• St. John the Evangelist (Ephesus, Turkey) who some said was only sleeping in his grave until the coming of Antichrist, when he would be needed as a witness.
• Csaba, the son of Attila the Hun (Hungary) who is supposed to ride down the Milky Way when the Székelys are threatened.
• King St. Stephen, King St. Ladislaus, King Matthias Corvinus (Hungary)
  • Kralj Matjaž (Slovenia)
• Emperor Charlemagne (Germany, France) rests in the Untersberg near Salzburg.
• Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos of the Eastern Roman Empire, a.k.a. the Immortal Emperor turned to marble (Greece) & (Cyprus) (a similar story, although Constantine was said to be turned into a statue, not to be resting in a mountain)
• Fionn mac Cumhaill (Ireland), is said to sleep in a cave/mountain surrounded by the Fianna (he is differentiated from them because of his large stature). It is told that the day will come when the Dord Fiann is sounded three times and Fionn and the Fianna will rise up again, as strong and well as they ever were. In other accounts he will return to glory as a great hero of Ireland.

• Ogier the Dane (Danish: Holger Danske, Denmark)
• King Harold (England). Said to have not been slain at Senlac by Anglo-Saxon legends, to come one day to liberate the English from the Norman yoke
• King Rodrigo (Spain). Said to escape from the Moorish invasion and await for "the time of maximum need" to save his people.
• Vytautas the Great (Lithuania) He is believed to rise from its grave when the worst danger will threaten Lithuania to defend the motherland at the last battle.
• Owain Lawgoch
• Owain Glyndŵr (Wales) The Last native born Welshmen to hold the title "Prince of Wales", he disappeared after a long but ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against the English. He was never captured or betrayed and refused all Royal pardons.
• Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (Germany) sleeps in the Kyffhäuser mountain and will rise to save the Empire
• King Henry the Fowler (Germany)
• King Pelayo (Spain)
• The legendary Moravian king Ječmínek will, according to a prophecy, return to save his country from enemies.
• An unnamed giant is supposed to sleep in Plynlimon in Wales.
• Giewont massif which is said to be a sleeping knight (Poland)
• The remains of the Golem of Prague are said to be in the attic of the Old New Synagogue in Prague, and that it can be brought back to defend the Jewish people. (Jewish mysticism)
• Gerald FitzGerald, 8th Earl of Kildare (Ireland)
• The Pueblo hero-god Montezuma — believed to have been a divine king in prehistoric times, and suspended in an Arizona mountain that bears his image.
• Bernardo Carpio the "King of the Tagalogs" said to reside in the mountains of Montalban, Philippines.
• Muhammad al-Mahdi (Islamic mysticism, especially Shi'a)
• Marko Kraljević (Serbia)
• King Olaf I (Norway)
• Väinämöinen, the protagonist of the Finnish national epic Kalevala. At the end of Kalevala, he leaves on a boat, promising to return when he is most needed.
• Sebastian I, (Portugal) (it is said by Sebastianists that the king will return in a hazy morning in time of need)
• The Sleeping Ute mountain in Colorado is said to have been a “Great Warrior God” who fell asleep while recovering from wounds received in a great battle with “the Evil Ones” (there are many other variants of this legend)
• Vlad III the Impaler (Romania)
• The poet and painter Taras Shevchenko (Ukraine), believed to be a supernatural hero (charakternik), is said to sleep under his grave mound in Kanev or even in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra.
• Tecumseh of the Shawnee
• William Tell (Switzerland, in some legends accompanied by two other Tells)
• Theseus (Athens)
• Thomas the Rhymer is found under a hill with a retinue of knights in a tale from Anglo-Scottish border. Likewise, Harry Hotspur was said to have been hunting in the Cheviots when he and his hounds got holed-up in the Hen Hole (or "Hell-hole") awaiting the sound of a hunting horn to awaken them from their slumber. Another border variant concerns a party of huntsmen who chase a roebuck into the Cheviots when they heard the sweetest music playing from the Henhole, however when they entered they became lost and are trapped to this day.
• St. Wenceslas (Václav) of Bohemia (Czech Republic). He sleeps in the Blaník mountain (with a huge army of Czech knights) and will emerge to protect his country at its worst time, riding on his white horse and wielding the legendary hero Bruncvík's sword.
• Boabdil, last Islamic prince of Granada.
• Bernardo del Carpio
• Lāčplēsis, the eponymous hero of the Latvian epic poem. It is said that he will rise out of the Daugava River when his country needs him to again take on her attackers and invaders. Alternatively, he will rise out of the Daugava at the end of the world.
• Matija Gubec (Croatia)
• Napoleon Bonaparte was considered to be also not dead but in Irkutsk and to come back by a Slavonic sect
• King David is depicted in Haim Nachman Bialik's tale "King David in the Cave" as sleeping along with his warriors deep inside a cave, waiting for the blast of the ram's horn that will awaken them from their millennia of slumber and arouse them to redeem Israel. This role was not attributed to King David in earlier Jewish tradition.