The Sleeping Prince is a Greek fairy tale collected by Georgios A. Megas [el] in Folktales of Greece.
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.
[9] 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.
[10] 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).
[13] 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.
[14] 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".
[16] 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").
[18][19][20] 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".
[22] Scholars Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav considered this story so close to the Turkish tales that they believed it to be a version that developed locally.
[26] 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.
She escapes with the help of a stag and returns home (tale type ATU 898, "The Girl Promised to the Sun").
She discovers the petrified body of a prince and she decides to release him from this curse, by holding a vigil for three days, three nights and three weeks without sleeping.
Nearing the end of the trial, and feing tired, she hires a slave woman to continue the vigil in her place, when the girl with reassume her position by the prince's side.
In the only recorded tale, the princess finds the coffin of the sleeping prince and a note to hold a vigil for three nights.
[32] According to the Latvian Folktale Catalogue, in type 437, Neīstā līgava ("The False Bride"), the heroine helps break the curse on the whole kingdom, until a girl comes and takes the credit for the deed.
[33] According to Dov Noy, the Turkish Folktale Catalogue (Typen türkischer Volksmärchen, or TTV) by Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav registered 38 variants in the country.
[34] In their joint work, the Turkish tales were grouped under type TTV 185, Der Geduldstein II [nl].
[35] In a Turkish variant collected by folklorist Ignác Kúnos with the title Stone-Patience and Knife-Patience, a poor woman's daughter stays at home when a bird chirps that "death" is her kismet ('fate', 'destiny').
At the end of the tale, the girl asks the Bey to bring her a stone-of-patience of a yellow colour and a knife-of-patience with brown handle.
Either way, the heroine enters a palace alone, the door locks her in, and she meets a prince lying on a slab, his body full of needles.
[37] Later, German scholar Ulrich Marzolph [de] reported 22 variants of tale type 894, Der Geduldstein, across Iranian sources.
[39] In an Uzbek tale titled Der brennende Stein or "Горючий камень" ("The Burning Stone"), a girl named Rose Bloom is fetching flowers, when she follows a trail deep into a mansion.