Jilinya is a female spirit-being named among the important figures of Ngarinyin Law alongside Dumbi the owl and the snake Dreamings. She is a shape-changer who appears in many forms, sizes and colours, and in coastal tellings hunts the creatures of the sea, at times taking the shape of a long-clawed crab. Regarded as a powerful and dangerous woman-spirit, she is a being to be respected and avoided rather than approached. Accounts vary in emphasis, some casting her as a fearsome hunter of the shore, others as a great ancestral spirit-woman of the country.