Tarob

Authors: Gabriel Batingon and Adon Mantigi

We know that the moon disappears during an eclipse, and science explains why. But long ago, the people of Tambunan and other villages in Sabah believed something different. They said a huge, hungry creature swallowed the moon. They called this creature Tarob or Barob, which means "greedy."

Understanding the Creature

Tarob was so hungry that nothing could fill his belly. His mother cooked food for him, but he always wanted more. Even when she told him to swallow stones, he was still not satisfied. Finally, his mother told him to swallow the moon. When he did, darkness covered all the earth.

Ceremonial Response

When the moon began to disappear, the villagers knew what was happening. They told the head of the family right away. Everyone grabbed their gongs and began to bang them loudly to warn the other villages. They made huge fires outside their homes and gathered hollow pots and pans. They arranged all these things on a special cloth called a saab.

The villagers beat their gongs and called out to Tarob, asking him to bring them good harvests and good luck. Some even fired their guns toward the sky. When Tarob's mother heard all this noise, she knew the people were angry. She told her son to spit out the moon. As soon as the moon became bright again, the villagers brought their things back inside.

After that, each family took a bottle to the well. They filled it with water and pebbles and said these words: "Please, Tarob, give us good luck and a good harvest." They tied cotton thread and small stones around the bottle's neck and kept it in their home. If the harvest was not very good that year, they believed Tarob must have helped other people instead. But they never lost hope that he would bring them luck the next year.

This narrative is part of Sabah Stories, a collection of traditional tales and indigenous folklore originally gathered and rendered into English by scholars attending Saint Francis Xavier High School in Keningau, Sabah, North Borneo, throughout 1968–1973. The text presented here has been entirely rewritten using contemporary language and phrasing whilst preserving all factual content, cultural terminology, place names, character designations, and the substantive narrative elements of the original source. This is not a reproduction of the original material.