A king keeps at his court "a lion which was a wondrous animal, for he knew all concealed and secret things" — a beast whose gift is not strength but sight into what is hidden. The lion looks at the twelve new huntsmen the King has taken into service and sees through them at once: "Thou thinkest thou hast twelve huntsmen", he says, and then, "Thou art mistaken, they are twelve girls". Our witness for the prophetic lion is the sixty-seventh of the Grimm's Household Tales (collected 1812–1857; this translation 1884), the tale of the twelve huntsmen, in which a jilted princess and eleven maidens exactly like her disguise themselves to serve the prince who abandoned her.

The lion, thwarted but sure of his knowledge, proposes tests. Scatter peas in the antechamber, he counsels, for men step firmly while "girls trip and skip, and drag their feet", and the peas will roll. Bring in twelve spinning-wheels, he says next, for the maidens will be drawn to them as no man would be. Twice a friendly servant warns the disguised women, twice they steel themselves and pass, and twice the King rebukes the lion for lying. Only when the true bride faints and her ring is uncovered is the lion vindicated — "the lion was again taken into favour, because, after all, he had told the truth".

The motif is the beast whose word is truth against all appearances: the prophetic animal who reads the secret and is disbelieved until the secret surfaces on its own. This single German witness is the only served attestation; Thompson filed no other authority here. What does it mean that the household tale needs a lion to see what the loving King cannot — that only the beast, not the man, can be trusted to name what is concealed under a huntsman's coat?