uMamlambo, 'the mother of the river', is a great serpent-being of the waters known among both the amaXhosa and the amaZulu. In Xhosa lore she is a giant river snake who brings good fortune to the one able to claim her, and she is invoked in connection with rain and the flow of streams. She has a darker aspect as a wealth-giving familiar: kept secretly by an owner she confers riches but exacts a price in blood or in the lives of kin, and dealings with her shade into accusations of witchcraft. In the Tyumie Valley of the Eastern Cape her presence is marked by clay serpent models made and given to the river. Sources differ on whether she is best understood as a goddess of the water, an ancestral river-being, or a malign familiar, and popular retellings blend the Xhosa river snake with the Zulu image of a mermaid-like woman.