Week 10: Legend of Pleiades (Storytelling)

There once was a young man, who never fit in with his village. He was a daydreamer and never connected well with people his age. Instead of going hunting with the others, he would rather watch the clouds in the day and the stars at night. He would lie in the grass, looking up, imagining what it would be like to live sky. But the other villagers believed that reality was where people should stay.They would whisper about the young one who was always lost in his mind.

When his parents insisted he find his own place to live, he moved to the very edge of the village’s land. He built his house on a lake that marked the end of their territory. It was peaceful there. The sunsets and would glisten off the lake and the moon’s path would be reflected across the clear water at night. Here his mind could wander without the judgmental eyes of his village.

Lake Shoreline by Norm Andreiw. Wikimedia

For the first few nights he stayed at the house, the quiet filled the air, broken only by the gentle lapping of water on the bank and the sounds of animals in the distance. One night, a week after the man moved to the lake, he woke to hear voices in the distance. The wind carried soft singing and laughter into his house. He stood quickly and listened to be sure he wasn’t dreaming, but the sounds continued.

He quietly snuck out of his house and followed the sweet sounds. He had rounded the side of the lake, when the sounds became clearer. There was splashing and giggling and singing from a group of girls close by. He continued to walk, trying to find where they were. Finally, he pushed some tree branches to the side to reveal seven young women. They were singing and dancing in the lake, splashing one another and giggling in the moon light.

The young man began to move towards them, when his foot slipped, sending rocks tumbling down the bank. The girls froze, searching for the source of the sound. Before he could move again, all of the young women grouped together and disappeared.  They seemed to somehow ascend into the sky, but they boy didn’t understand how they could. After staring silently at the now calm lake, he made his way back home, trying to work through what he had just seen.

The next morning when he woke, the young man decided it was probably a dream. Yet, he couldn’t shake his curiosity. So he decided to sleep that day, and return to the place he thought he had seen the women that night.

When the sky turned to the darkest shade of blue, he left his home once again. The faint moonlight revealed footprints. Maybe it hadn’t been a dream. He made it to the other side of the lake. When he reached the tree line, a scuffmark was etched into the ground where his foot had slipped. The man walked a few steps forward and sat on the rocky bank of the lake to wait for the women he was certain wouldn’t come.

For a few hours, nothing happened. The man watched the stars and the rippling of the water as the wind brushed across it. As he gazed up again, he looked for patterns in the stars. Suddenly, the star he was looking at dimmed, and seemed to streak toward the earth. He sat up. He shifted his gaze back to the lake, where one of the women stood before him, the water rising a little above her ankles.

She looked at the man suspiciously. Her only movements were the wind catching her long dark hair and her eyes looking over the man and the forest behind him. When she spoke, her voice was as clear and beautiful as the man had heard the night before. “You were the one spying on my sisters and I last night?” An angry edge seeped into her soft voice.

“I… I didn’t mean to spy on you,” he stuttered. “I just heard the singing…”

She continued to watch him cautiously. “So, why are you here now?”

“To… uh… to see if I imagined you… and apologize for startling you, too.” He couldn’t take his eyes off the woman or form a coherent thought. She began to relax a little, although she didn’t move any closer.

She looked up at the sky and nodded. He managed to tear his gaze from the woman to see six other stars streaking towards the earth. Then there were six women standing behind the first. Her sisters.

“This man means us no harm,” she said to the girls standing behind her. He nodded, trying to reassure them. That night he stayed by the side of the lake. The younger sisters played in the water. The middle sisters sang and danced together. The oldest, the first woman to come down, sat with the man and they talked.

She asked him about his life and world. She told him about their lives, living in the stars. Then at the end of the night, she and her sisters rose again into the sky world. For many weeks after, the oldest sister and the man would talk nightly, while her sisters played and sang. During the days, the man waited until he could see her again. Finally, after months of these meetings, he asked the oldest sister to marry him.

She told him she wanted to but she couldn’t leave her sisters. They sat in silence for a while before she said, “Would you come with us? I know you have your family here, but you could come and live in the sky with us if you wanted.” After some thought, the man agreed. He and the seven sisters ascended to the sky. Even today, in the night, you can see the seven sisters shining bright. But one stays close to another star, her husband. This is the constellation Pleiades. 

Pleiades by NASA. Wikimedia.

Author's Note: The original story was called The Origin of the Pleiades from the British North America reading unit. I kept the overall plot the same, and the third person narrative, but I changed a lot of details in the plot and added more back story. In the original, the young man just spied on the seven sisters for a long time and never approached or talked to them. When he decided he wanted to marry one of the women, he ran at them from the trees and just grabbed the most beautiful one before she could get away. He then said she would be his wife and would stay on earth with him. The woman agreed to be his wife but said that he had to go to the sky world with her for them to marry. I wanted a less creepy/stalkery version of the main guy and a bit more of a romantic story, instead of a type of bride capture. 

Story source: Myths and Legends of British North America by Katharine Berry Judson (1917).