King in The Mountain - General Features

General Features

King in the mountain stories involve legendary heroes, often accompanied by armed retainers, sleeping in remote dwellings, including caves on high mountaintops, remote islands, or supernatural worlds. The hero is frequently a historical figure of some military consequence in the history of the nation where the mountain is located.

The stories gathered by the Brothers Grimm concerning Frederick Barbarossa and Charlemagne are typical of the stories told, and have been influential on many told variants and subsequent adaptations. The presence of the hero is unsuspected, until some herdsman wanders into the cave, typically looking for a lost animal, and sees the hero. The stories almost always mention the detail that the hero has grown a long beard, indicative of the long time he has slept beneath the mountain.

In the Brothers Grimm version, the hero speaks with the herdsman. Their conversation typically involves the hero asking, "Do the eagles (or ravens) still circle the mountaintop?" The herdsman, or a mysterious voice, replies, "Yes, they still circle the mountaintop." "Then begone! My time has not yet come."

The herdsman is usually supernaturally harmed by the experience: he ages rapidly, he emerges with his hair turned white, and often he dies after repeating the tale. The story goes on to say that the king sleeps in the mountain, awaiting a summons to arise with his knights and defend the nation in a time of deadly peril. The omen that presages his rising will be the extinction of the birds that trigger his awakening.

Read more about this topic:  King In The Mountain

Other articles related to "general features, general, features":

Su-30MKI - Design - Cockpit and Ergonomics - General Features
... Beginning in 2010, HUDs and Multi-Function Displays (MFD) will be provided by the Delhi-based Samtel Display Systems ... These are indigenously designed and built and are not part of a joint foreign venture ...
Embryo Drawing - Famous Embryo Illustrators - Karl Ernst Von Baer (1792-1876)
... to model one of the most complex problems facing embryologists at the time the arrangement of general and special characters during development in different species of animals ... Von Baer’s laws state that general features of animals appear earlier in the embryo than special features, where less general features stem from the most general ... Von Baer’s embryo drawings display that individual development proceeds from general features of the developing embryo in early stages through differentiation into special ...
Comparison Of Shopping Cart Software - General Features
... Information about the features the shopping carts offer Source Code Provided Ajax Usage Digital Downloads eBay Listing Integration eBay Order Import Multiple ...
Treatise On Invertebrate Paleontology - List of Its Volumes - Mollusca (I, J, K, L, M & N)
... Mollusca 1 Mollusca General Features, Scaphopoda, Amphineura, Monoplacophora, Gastropoda General Features, Archaeogastropoda, Mainly Paleozoic Caenogastropoda and Opisthobranchia), xxiii + 351 p ... Mollusca 3 Cephalopoda General Features, Endoceratoidea, Actinoceratoidea, Nautiloidea, Bactritoidea, xxviii + 519 p ...

Famous quotes containing the words features and/or general:

    However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.
    Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    In former times and in less complex societies, children could find their way into the adult world by watching workers and perhaps giving them a hand; by lingering at the general store long enough to chat with, and overhear conversations of, adults...; by sharing and participating in the tasks of family and community that were necessary to survival. They were in, and of, the adult world while yet sensing themselves apart as children.
    Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)