Namongan is the mother of the epic hero Lam-ang and wife of the slain Don Juan. Left pregnant when her husband goes to war against the headhunters, she bears a son who astonishes her by speaking at the moment of his birth and choosing his own name. In the narrative she embodies the anxious mother of heroic epic, consenting with foreboding to the boy's departure to avenge his father and later to his perilous courtship. Her figure anchors the domestic frame around which the marvels of the epic unfold.