Grootslang

The Grootslang, Afrikaans for "great snake," is a giant serpent of South African legend said to lurk in a bottomless cave or pool in the diamond country of the Richtersveld and the Orange River.

The Story

The Richtersveld is a harsh, mountainous desert in South Africa's Northern Cape, bordered by the Orange River. Diamonds were found along the river and coast in the early 20th century, and prospectors who searched the region came back with stories of a monstrous snake, the groot slang, "great snake" in Afrikaans and Dutch.

In the earliest written account, the prospector Fred Cornell's guides told him the snake lived in a great split rock in a deep, still stretch of the Orange River, where it could seize cattle from the banks. Local Nama people splashed and shouted when crossing the river at night for fear of it. Cornell also heard of a deep shaft called Hadje Aibeep, nicknamed the "Bottomless Pit," where men were said to have found "bright stones" and which one legend linked with a dragon-like monster. Later accounts make the Grootslang's lair a cave full of diamonds, sometimes called the Wonder Hole, or place it in the pool below Augrabies Falls, and say the snake guards this wealth; Cornell himself does not describe it guarding treasure, so that trait is left open here.

Appearance and Powers

The Grootslang is described as an enormous snake. Cornell reported that many people claimed to have seen its spoor in the sand or mud, a foot and a half wide and with no traces of feet, and that the Nama name for it was "Ki-man."

Many modern websites describe the Grootslang as part elephant and part snake, created by the gods before they split it into the first elephants and snakes. That story has no known basis in South African tradition. It appears to be a recent invention, possibly from a fantasy role-playing game supplement, and the elephant-like features seem to have grown out of cryptozoology writing and a loose description in a modern reference book.

Origins and Sources

The earliest written source located for this entry is the prospector Fred C. Cornell, who wrote about the Richtersveld in The Glamour of Prospecting (1920). Cornell called it "this huge python--or whatever it may be" and thought very large rock pythons might still live in those mountains. A story often repeated online, that an English businessman named Peter Grayson vanished in 1917 while searching for the Grootslang's diamonds, could not be traced to a reliable primary source and should be treated with caution. How far the legend draws on older beliefs of the region's Nama people, who have their own traditions of water snakes, is not well documented.

Legacy

The Grootslang has become a popular figure in online lists of monsters and in cryptozoology, and it appears in fantasy games. Like the dragons of Europe, it ties a giant serpent to buried treasure. For comparisons, see dragons of Africa and the hoard-guarding dragons of the West.

Related

• Inkanyamba: The Inkanyamba is a giant storm serpent of Zulu and Xhosa belief in South Africa, said to live in deep waterfall pools such as Howick Falls and to cause violent summer storms and tornadoes when it is angry.
• Ninki Nanka: The Ninki Nanka is a dragon-like swamp monster from the folklore of the Gambia and southern Senegal, a huge reptile with a long neck and crested head whose very sight is said to bring sickness or death.
• Aido Hwedo: Aido Hwedo is the rainbow serpent of Fon religion in Benin, who carried the creator Mawu as the world was made and now lies coiled beneath the earth, holding it together.
• Ladon: Ladon is the serpent-dragon of Greek myth that coiled around the tree of golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides, guarding it until Heracles came for the apples.
• Dragons Across Cultures
• Western Dragons

Sources and Further Reading

• Fred C. Cornell, The Glamour of Prospecting (T. Fisher Unwin, 1920)
• Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth (ABC-CLIO, 2000; W. W. Norton, 2001)

Cite this entry: “Grootslang,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/grootslang.