The Tikbalang: The Horse-Headed Trickster of Philippine Forests
When rain falls out of a sunny sky in the Philippines, the children sing the old verdict at once: somewhere, a tikbalang is getting married . The creature so honored is the archipelago's great forest trickster: the tikbalang —a towering figure, far taller than a man, with the head and hooves of a horse on a man's gaunt body , limbs so long that when it squats its knees rise above its head; a mane of coarse spikes; and a residence every rural Filipino can point to: the great old trees—the balete above all, the strangler fig whose columned, buttressed, root-curtained bulk is the archipelago's standing door to the spirit world—and the bamboo brakes, the banana groves, the foggy mountain trails. Its office, learned by every traveler the hard way, is the family business of forest tricksters everywhere: the tikbalang turns the path . The man who walks under its tree without leave, or cuts through its grove, finds the trail circling—the same stream crossed three times, the same ...