The story
Ibalong Festival in Legazpi
Ibalong Festival in Legazpi City, Albay, is a cultural celebration built around the Ibalong, an epic poem recounting the legendary heroes Baltog, Handyong and Bantong, who are said to have tamed the wild Bicol region, expressed through street dance, floats and dramatized theatrical reenactment each October.
The Ibalong is an epic narrative from Bicolano oral tradition, believed to have originated well before Spanish colonization and later recorded in written form by a Spanish friar in the nineteenth century, recounting the exploits of legendary heroes including Baltog, who is said to have defeated a giant wild boar terrorizing early settlers, Handyong, credited with defeating a range of monstrous creatures and introducing agriculture and social order to the region, and Bantong, who is said to have slain a fearsome half-man half-beast figure that had continued to threaten the community.