Storytelling: The Seven Sisters of Pleiades

Pleiades Constellation 

We are the Seven Sisters.  We have been together for as long as anyone can remember and it is our intent to stay that way.  There have been many who have tried to separate us throughout the years, but none have succeeded.  Though we live in the Sky Land, we are quiet fond of the earth and all that inhabit it.  Because of this, we visit whenever the season is right.  We visit whenever the wind is calm and the lakes are still. 

One day, long ago, a frail young man happened upon us.  Because he was weak, we thought nothing of him.  He had apparently heard our singing and dancing and decided to watch from the safety of the reeds that lined the beach.  As soon as we realized we had someone watching us, we returned immediately to the sky.  Together, the seven of us discussed it and decided that it was just a fluke.  We misjudged and underestimated the young man to our own detriment.  To be safe, we decided to stay away from earth for a while, but it was only for a short period.  We were too eager to return to our lake side paradise.  We became reckless.

We watched as best as we could from our place in the sky, but we saw nothing.  We crept down from the sky and landed on the beach of the lake as quietly as possible.  Each of the seven of us searched the area around the beach.  Again we saw nothing.  With the precautions out of the way, we relaxed and enjoyed our earthly freedom.  We were there for almost an hour before anything happened.  We were dancing when one of us noticed something.  The reeds were moving, but there was no wind.  One of our sisters followed the movements.  We had all turned out attention there as well, but one of us was a few steps closer than the rest.  She parted the reeds to see what was causing the movements, but the young man was hiding there.  He had drawn us in.

As soon as our sister parted the reeds, he jumped out and caught her.  The rest of us almost panicked, but our sister was very clever.  She knew that the man wanted to keep one of us for himself, so she played on that.  She promised him that she would marry him, if only he would come with us to the Sky Land instead of staying on earth.  In his eagerness, he consented to going to the Sky Land.  Once we returned with the man in tow, we all decided then that we would never go the earth again.  That way no one could ever try to separate us.

Author’s Note:

I chose to write about the story of the Origin of the Pleiades.  I kept most of the story the same, however I added details to flesh out the rest of the story.  The original story kind of had a “happily ever after” type of ending, but that’s not exactly how I felt about it.  I wanted to keep the story the same, but play up that the man did wrong by trying to steal one of the sisters. 

Origin of the Pleiades from the British North America unit

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