Tikbalang

The tikbalang is a Philippine forest being, most often pictured as a very tall figure with horse's hooves or a horse's head. Records run from a 1589 list of Tagalog phantoms to modern sculpture. None of these sources counts it among the aswang.

Juan de Plasencia, writing in 1589, noted that the Tagalogs had phantoms they called Tigbalaang. He gave no description. Around 1731 the friar Tomas Ortiz wrote of the tigbalag, which some called a ghost and others a goblin. To him it seemed a genius or devil that showed itself as a black man, as an old man or a tiny old man, as a horse, or as a monster.

Fletcher Gardner, in 1906, set down the fullest early description. People told him the tik-balan stood at least twelve feet tall, with a man's body and a horse's hoofs. Some gave it huge round eyes, others a long horse-like face. It had long flowing hair, and one way to trap it was to hammer heavy nails into a tree it visited so its hair caught. It lived in caves deep in the forest and came out to hunt human flesh.

The sculptor Saprid made his name with a series on the tikbalang, according to Alice G. Guillermo in the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art. She writes that he dropped its menace and made it playful, witty and a little comic, stretching its long equine head, maned neck and gangly limbs.