Rabot
Bicolano · demigod · heroic age · Recorded classification
Rabot is the last of the great monsters of the Ibalong epic, a ferocious being half human and half beast who lived in a cave and could turn anyone he encountered into stone. His den was ringed with the petrified figures of his victims. The hero Bantong, sent against him with a thousand warriors, killed Rabot single-handedly by attacking while the monster slept, cleaving the body in two. So gruesome was the corpse that even the great Handyong was appalled when it was carried to Ligmanan. Rabot belongs to the epic's succession of named adversaries alongside the serpent Oryol and the boar Tandayag.
Domains
- petrification
Powers
- to turn people into stone
Relations
- enemy: BantongRabot is the final monster of the epic, hunted down and killed by the hero Bantong.Espinas, Merito B. (1968). Ibalong: The Bikol Folk Epic-Fragment. Unitas 41(3), University of Santo Tomas. (secondary)
Sources
- Rabot is the half-man, half-beast monster of the Ibalong epic who turned his victims to stone and was slain by Bantong.: Espinas, Merito B. (1968). Ibalong: The Bikol Folk Epic-Fragment. Unitas 41(3), University of Santo Tomas (reissued 1996, UST Publishing House). (secondary); Eugenio, Damiana L. (2001). Philippine Folk Literature: The Epics. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. (secondary)