Berezkin Analytical Catalogue · Motif
I122 — The Pleiades – a beehive.
Source data for narratives and traditions is drawn from Berezkin’s Analytical Catalogue. If you use this data, please acknowledge and link to it: Ю.Е. Березкин, Е.Н. Дувакин. Тематическая классификация и распределение фольклорно-мифологических мотивов по ареалам. Аналитический каталог.
Summary of motif
OverviewThe Pleiades – a beehive, a nest, a cluster of bees or wasps.
Berezkin category: Supernatural objects, objects and creatures
This is of motif type Cosmology and etiology and is part of group 2, Moon spots, stars, constellations.
Top 10 motifs with similar dispersal patterns
Phylogeny| Motif | Similarity | Motif summary |
|---|---|---|
| L57B | 96.54% | A person tears off or cuts off a part of the body of a predatory animal or demonic creature and uses it. The creature comes for the lost part, usually killing or maiming the person. |
| H33 | 92.97% | At first, children walked, had to walk, or could walk immediately after birth. |
| L4 | 91.86% | The character consistently (almost) kills girls (rarely: his nephews or his wife's younger brothers) whom he brings to his home (usually a male character kills wives). The heroine or hero (the youngest of all) avoids the common fate, usually after discovering the captives or their remains. |
| L23 | 91.76% | Trying to free himself, the captured character successively transforms into various substances, materials or animals, or (Urarina, Setebo) orders various dangerous animals to successively attack the person who captured him. (In some cases, only one variant of transformation is mentioned, but in the same context as in typical variants with a series of transformations). |
| L37C1 | 91.66% | The happiness (misfortune, hardship, etc.) of each person is represented by specific characters with whom they interact. |
| L23D | 91.65% | A man captures a desirable woman. Trying to free herself, she transforms into various substances, materials, animals or (urarina, setebo) orders various dangerous animals to attack the man who captured her. |
| L19B3 | 91.48% | A creature with 12 heads is mentioned – either singly or at the end of a series of creatures with fewer heads. |
| G25 | 91.28% | Cereal seeds are scattered across the world, fell to the ground, now people grow bread. |
| I132B | 91.28% | A girl comes to the Sun to become his wife, but at the last moment undergoes a metamorphosis (usually turning into a bird). |
| I7B | 91.28% | Lightning – a crack in the sky through which the heavens are visible for a moment. |
See the 100 most similar distributions →
Map of motif dispersal
DistributionDrag the map to pan, use the scroll wheel to zoom — choose a texture or projection below
Traditions
10 recordedThis motif has been recorded in 10 traditions: Congo (Koongo, Bacongo; incl Vili, Fioti, (Ma)Yombe, MuKunyi), Ndombo, Luango (Loango), Zombo (Sambo), Laadi (Laari), (Ba)Fioti, Woyo (Kiwoyo), Ronga, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Balkarians, Western Ukrainians, Mordvins, Barasana, Taibano, Macuna, Kanamari, Eastern Ukrainians, Northern Ukrainians, Russian Federation
If you wish to get access to data for projects and research, then please contact us, we do our best to help
How to cite: Fielder-White, J. (2026). The Folklore Database. https://folkloredatabase.com
0009-0006-1672-4451
Where applicable, users should also cite the relevant original sources, catalogues, and classification systems, including Berezkin, ATU, Thompson, and other cited authorities, alongside the page accessed and the last time accessed.
Editorial annotations and database enhancements © Jonathan Fielder-White licensed under CC BY 4.0. Berezkin-derived narrative and metadata licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Full rights information can be found here.
All rights are reserved in the database structure, selection, arrangement, metadata, classifications, software, interface design, and original editorial content.
Important: The Folklore Database expressly reserves all rights in relation to text and data mining, automated extraction, scraping, machine learning, dataset creation, and the training, development, validation, or improvement of artificial intelligence technologies or systems. No part of this website or database may be scraped, copied, reproduced, harvested, downloaded in bulk, or otherwise used for AI training or commercial data extraction without prior written permission.
Designed and Developed by Jon Fielder-White.
© 2024–2026 Crecganford / Jonathan Fielder-White. All rights reserved.