Halus
Atayal · numen · Atayal traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Halus is the great giant of Atayal legend, a being of the old world whose body could bridge a gorge and whose hunger consumed whole animals at a sitting. The tales dwell with rough humour on his monstrous proportions, telling how he laid himself across rivers, diverted their water or trapped fish and game, and how he wearied the people with his demands for food. In the end the villagers rid themselves of him by a trick, in the common version feeding him red-hot stones disguised as food so that he burned from within and died. He belongs to the widely shared Formosan repertoire of giant and ogre stories, localized to the Atayal mountains.
Domains
- monsters and giants
Powers
- spans rivers and valleys with his body
- devours whole beasts
Sources
- Atayal oral literature tells of a giant named Halus, of grotesque size and appetite, who oppressed the people until they contrived to kill him.: Tian Zhe-yi / Masegeseg Z. Gadu (田哲益), Atayal Myths and Legends (泰雅族神話與傳說), Morningstar, 2003 (secondary); Ogawa Naoyoshi & Asai Erin, The Myths and Traditions of the Formosan Native Tribes, 1935 — Atayal giant tales (primary)