science

The Benevolent Frog

The Benevolent Frog is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Benevolent Frog rather than just read about it. In short: The Benevolent Frog (La Grenouille bienfaisante) or The Frog and the Lion Fairy is a French literary fairy tale, written by Madame d'Aulnoy. Andrew Lang included the tale in The Orange Fairy Book with the title The Frog and the Lion Fairy.

Key takeaways

The Benevolent Frog belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Benevolent Frog to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Benevolent Frog from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Benevolent Frog (La Grenouille bienfaisante) or The Frog and the Lion Fairy is a French literary fairy tale, written by Madame d'Aulnoy. Andrew Lang included the tale in The Orange Fairy Book with the title The Frog and the Lion Fairy.

Synopsis A king's capital was besieged, and he sent the queen to safety. She found it very dreary and resolved to return, despite her guards. She had a carriage made for herself, and took advantage of a distraction to escape, but the horses bolted past her power to control and she was thrown and injured. A gigantic woman, wearing a lion skin, was there when the queen regained consciousness. The woman introduced herself as the Fairy Lioness. She invited the queen to her home, a frightful cave peopled with ravens and owls, having a lake with monsters, but with little and poor food. There, she told the queen to build herself a house. The queen pleaded with her, and the fairy said that the only way to appease her was fly pasties, which the queen could not make. The queen lamented that the king would never know what became of her. She saw a raven eating a frog and rescued the frog. The frog told her that all the creatures in the lake were once human and had been turned to these forms for their wickedness, which seldom improved them. The frog also explained that she was a demi-fairy and her powers lay in her hood of roses, which she had laid aside when the raven caught her. She and her frog friends caught the flies for the queen, who made a fly pasty for the lion fairy. She then started to build a hut. She found it difficult and the frog sent her to rest and built it. The lion fairy wondered who helped her and demanded a bouquet of rare flowers; the frog asked a friendly bat to gather them. Then the frog told her future: she would not escape, but have a beautiful daughter. The king discovered the wreckage of his wife's chariot and assumed she was dead. The princess was born, and the queen persuaded the lion fairy, who would gladly have eaten her, to let her raise the child. One day when the child was six, the frog went to find the king. It took her seven years, in which time the lion fairy took the queen and princess hunting, which lessened her cruelty, because they were able to bring her quarry. The frog arrived in time to find the king remarrying, but the letter she carried convinced him that the queen was alive. With a ring from the frog, the king set out to rescue her. In the forest, he saw the lion fairy, in the shape of a lioness, carrying the queen and princess on her back. The lion fairy imprisoned the queen and princess in a castle on the lake, and told all the monsters, who had fallen in love with the princess, that the king would take her from them. The king overcame the lion fairy, but she distracted him by pointing to the castle, and vanished. After three years, a dragon offered to rescue them if the king gave him a delicious food when he asked for it. The king agreed, and the dragon defeated the others. They found themselves in the king's capital. A prince fell in love with the princess and wooed her. He went to make arrangements for the wedding. The dragon demanded the princess for his dinner, by means of a giant ambassador. After a time, the dragon offered to spare her if she married his nephew. The princess said she had promised to marry the prince and could not marry another. The frog went to the prince and gave him a marvelous horse to reach the dragon. He fought and killed it, freeing a prince who had been held prisoner inside the dragon's body. The prince and princess married.

Legacy The tale was one of many from d'Aulnoy's pen to be adapted to the stage by James Planché, as part of his Fairy Extravaganza. He also translated the tale as The beneficent frog, and renamed it The Queen of the Frogs when he adapted the tale to the stage. The story was also translated as The Beneficent Frog, by Laura Valentine, in The Old, Old Fairy Tales. In another English translation, erroneously attributed to Charles Perrault, the tale was titled The Friendly Frog.

References

External links Works related to The beneficient Frog at Wikisource

The Benevolent Frog The Frog and the Lion Fairy

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Benevolent Frog

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Benevolent Frog claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Benevolent Frog before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Benevolent Frog ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Benevolent Frog

In research: The Benevolent Frog appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Benevolent Frog in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Benevolent Frog is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Fairy tales about lions, French fairy tales, French literature, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Benevolent Frog outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Benevolent Frog in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Benevolent Frog means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Benevolent Frog out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Benevolent Frog in simple terms?

Why does The Benevolent Frog matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Benevolent Frog?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Benevolent Frog.