The Sleeping Prince is a Greek fairy tale collected by in Folktales of Greece.Georgios A. Megas, Folktales of Greece, p 70, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1970.

It is Aarne-Thompson 425G: False Bride takes the heroine's place as she tries to stay awake; recognition when heroine tells her story.Georgias A. Megas, Folktales of Greece, p 227, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1970 This is also found as part of Nourie Hadig, and a literary variant forms part of the frame story of the Pentamerone.Ashliman, D. L. A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, vol. 11. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987. p. 90. .

The tale type was also closely related to AaTh 437, "The Supplanted Bride (The Needle Prince)". However, the last major revision of the International Folktale Classification Index, written in 2004 by German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, subsumed tale type AaTh 437 as new type ATU 894, "".Avard Jivanyan. Anthropomorphic Dolls as Otherworldly Helpers in the International Folk Tale. 8th International Toy Research Association World Conference, International Toy Research Association (ITRA), Jul 2018, Paris, France. ffhal-02114234fCorreia, Paulo. "Notas e Recensões: Hans-Jörg Uther, The types of international folktales. A classification and bibliography, Helsinki, Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004, 3 volumes: FFC 284 (619 pages) + FFC 285 (536 pages) + FFC (284 pages)". In: E.L.O n. 1314 2007. p. 325.

Synopsis

A king had only his daughter, his wife having died, and had to go to war. The princess promised to stay with her nurse while he was gone. One day, an eagle came by and said she would have a dead man for a husband; it came again the next day. She told her nurse, and her nurse told her to tell the eagle to take her to him. The third day, it came, and she asked; it brought her to a palace, where a prince slept like the dead, and a paper said that whoever had pity on him must watch for three months, three weeks, three days, three hours, and three half-hours without sleeping, and then, when he sneezed, she must bless him and identify herself as the one who watched. He and the whole castle would wake, and he would marry the woman.

She watched three months, three weeks, and three days. Then she heard someone offering to hire maids. She hired one for company. The maid persuaded her to sleep, the prince sneezed, and the maid claimed him. She told him to let the princess sleep and when she woke, set to tend the geese. (The fairy tale starts to refer to the prince as the king.)

The king had to go to war. He asked the queen what she wanted, and she asked for a golden crown. He asked the goose-girl, and she asked for the millstone of patiences, the hangman's rope, and the butcher's knife, and if he did not bring them, his ship would go neither backward nor forward. He forgot them, and his ship would not move; an old man asked him if he had promised anything, so he bought them. He gave his wife the crown and the other things to the goose-girl. That evening, he went down to her room. She told her story to the things and asked them what she should do. The butcher's knife said to stab herself; the rope, to hang herself; the millstone, to have patience. She asked for the rope again and went to hang herself. The king broke in and saved her. He declared she was his wife and he would hang the other on the rope. She told him only to send her away. They went to her father for his blessing.

Analysis Tale type Richard MacGillivray Dawkins described that the "essence" of the tale type involves the heroine being destined to marry "a dead man", which is not dead at all. The prince, in fact, is under a magical sleep in a room in a castle somewhere. The heroine finds him and stays by his side on a long vigil.Dawkins, Richard McGillivray. Modern Greek folktales. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1953. p. 175. The heroine hires a maid or slave to help her in the long vigil, but she replaces the heroine and takes credit for awakening the prince. At the end of the tale, the prince, now back to life, is asked by a broken heroine to bring her ("almost always") three objects: a knife, a rope to hang herself with and a stone of patience.Angelopoulou, Anna; Broskou, Aigle. "ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΑΚΩΝ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 300-499". Tome B: AT 400-499. Athens, Greece: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ Ε.Ι.Ε. 1999. pp. 776-777.

Motifs Starting episodes The tale type may start with one of two opening episodes: a bird announces to the heroine she will marry a dead man, and she decides to look for him; or the heroine is with her family on a field or in the forest, goes astray and ends up in the dead prince's tomb, where she begins her long vigil over his body.Angelopoulou, Anna; Broskou, Aigle. "ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΑΚΩΝ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 300-499". Tome B: AT 400-499. Athens, Greece: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ Ε.Ι.Ε. 1999. pp. 775-776.

Other motifs In some variants, the stone of patience explodes after the heroine tells her woes.Die Silberpappel mit den goldenen Früchten und andere türkische Volksmärchen erstmals übersetzt von Otto Spies. Textbearbeitung von Manfred Hesse. Wiesbaden: B. Heymann Verlag, 1976. p. 111.

According to Greek folklorist , in subtype AT 425G, the heroine is not promised to, nor marries an animal, but an enchanted prince trapped in an enchanted sleep, and only the heroine may save him by holding a long 40 day vigil.

Variants Distribution Greek scholars Anna Angelopoulou and Aigle Broskou locate variants of type AaTh 425G in Greece, Turkey, Southern Italy, Sicily, Spain, North Africa (among the Berbers) and even in Poland.Angelopoulou, Anna; Broskou, Aigle. "ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΑΚΩΝ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 300-499". Tome B: AT 400-499. Athens, Greece: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ Ε.Ι.Ε. 1999. pp. 775-776.

Israeli professor Dov Noy reported that the tale type 894 was "very popular in Oriental literature", with variants found in India, Iran, Egypt and regionally in Europe (southern and eastern).Noy, Dov. Folktales of Israel. University of Chicago Press. 1963. p. 117.

As for type 437, Richard Dorson stated that it appears "sporadically in Europe", but it is "better known in India".Dorson, Richard M. Folktales told around the world. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press. 1978. p. 238. . Indian scholar A. K. Ramanujan states that the tale type is known in Europe as "The Needle Prince".Ramanujan, A. K. A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India. University of California Press, 1997. p. 218. . In this regard, according to Enzyklopädie des Märchens, type 437 is reported in Europe (South, Southeastern, Eastern and Northeast), in the Caucasus, Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and India.

Europe Scholars Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana stated that "in European tradition" type AaTh 894 is found in association with the story of "The Sleeping Prince".Muhawi, Ibrahim, and Sharif Kanaana. Speak, Bird, Speak Again: Palestinian Arab Folktales. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1989. p. 365. . Professor Jack V. Haney stated that type 437 is more common in Ukraine, but "uncommon" in Western Europe.Haney, Jack, V. An Anthology of Russian Folktales. London and New York: Routledge. 2015 . p. 74. .

Italy A Sicilian variant was collected by Laura Gonzenbach with the title Der böse Schulmeister und die wandernde Königstochter ("The Evil Schoolmaster and the Wandering Princess").Gonzenbach, Laura. Sicilianische Märchen. Leipzig: Engelmann. 1870. pp. 59-64.

Greece According to scholars Anna Angélopoulos and Marianthi Kaplanoglou, the tale type AaTh 425G (now included in the general subtype ATU 425A after 2004) is the "most widely disseminated subtype in Greece, with 118 versions".Angelopoulos, Anna and Kaplanoglou, Marianthi. "Greek Magic Tales: aspects of research in Folklore Studies and Anthropology". In: FF Network. 2013; Vol. 43. p. 15.Angélopoulos, Anna. "Le conte d'Eros et Psyché dans la littérature orale". In: Topique 2001/2 (no 75), pp. 155-169. https://doi.org/10.3917/top.075.0155Angelopoulou, Anna; Broskou, Aigle. "ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΑΚΩΝ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 300-499". Tome B: AT 400-499. Athens, Greece: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ Ε.Ι.Ε. 1999. pp. 775-776, 783.

In another Greek variant, The Knife of Slaughter, the Whet-stone of Patience and the Unmelting Candle, a girl is broidering when a bird chirps that she is to marry a "lifeless man". One day, she enters a neighbouring house and sees the body of a prince holding a letter in his hand, telling for someone to hold a vigil for three nights, three days and three weeks. Nearing the end of the vigil, she takes in a gypsy as a companion, who takes the credit for the vigil. After the prince and the gypsy marry, she asks the prince to bring her the titular items: the Knife of Slaughter, the Whet-stone of Patience and the Unmelting Candle.Geldart, Edmund Martin. Folk-lore of modern Greece: the tales of the people. London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1884. pp. 62-65.

Spain Hispanist located a Spanish tale he numbered as type *445B (a number not added to the revision of the international index, at the time), in his 1930 index. In this story, the princess holds a vigil on a king that will only awake on St. John's Day. She buys a slave woman for company, who takes her place at the king's bed and passes herself as his saviour. The despondent princess asks the prince to bring her two objects: a hard stone and the branch of bitterness. The king learns these are objects requested by people who are on the verge on taking their own lives.Boggs, Ralph Steele. Index of Spanish folktales, classified according to Antti Aarne's "Types of the folktale". Chicago: University of Chicago. 1930. pp. 61-62. Scholars Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav (1953) considered this story so close to the Turkish tales that they believed it to be a version that developed locally.Eberhard, Wolfram; Boratav, Pertev Nailî. Typen türkischer Volksmärchen. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1953. p. 213. Later, scholars Julio Camarena and Maxime Chevalier, in their updated Spanish catalogue (1995), considered Boggs's indexing as tale type AaTh 437, "La novia suplantada (La espina del príncipe)".CAMARENA, JULIO; Maxime CHEVALIER (1995). Catálogo tipográfico del cuento folklórico español. Vol. I: Cuentos maravillosos. Madrid, Castalia. pp. 303, 306.

Armenia According to Armenian scholarship, Armenia also registers similar tales about the heroine's confession to the object of patience.Avard Jivanyan. "Anthropomorphic Dolls as Otherworldly Helpers in the International Folk Tale". In: 8th International Toy Research Association World Conference. International Toy Research Association (ITRA), Jul 2018, Paris, France. pp. 2-4. ffhal-02114234 In Armenian tales, the object is called Sabri Xrcig or Doll of Patience, related to the cycle of stories called Le Prince endormi ("The Sleeping Prince").Hayrapetyan Tamar. "Combinaisons archétipales dans les epopees orales et les contes merveilleux armeniens". Traduction par Léon Ketcheyan. In: Revue des etudes Arméniennes tome 39 (2020). pp. 547-565. The "Doll of Patience" (Armenian: Սաբրի խրծիկ; Sabri khrtsik) is a dowry gift, given to the newlywed bride and which acts as her confidante as she moves to an unknown household after marriage.