Rabu Kaba is the noble widow at the centre of the West-Central Sumbanese legend that accounts for the pasola, the ritual horseback spear-joust of Wanokaka, Lamboya and neighbouring districts held each year when the nyale (sea-worms) swarm on the southern beaches. In the recorded tradition she is the wife of one of a group of noble brothers who leave on a long journey; believing them lost, she remarries a man from another district and departs, and when the brothers return to find her gone the grieving community institutes the joust to vent and channel its sorrow. The legend links human loss, the rising of the sea-worms, and the fertility of the coming rice year. Sources differ in the names, number and kin roles of the figures, and the personal names are transmitted with considerable orthographic variation; the tale is oral folklore of the western districts rather than part of the East Sumbanese Marapu high pantheon.