When they had eaten, Ali-the-eel instructed them further in behavior appropriate to members of his new clan:

“The meat of eels is forever forbidden to you,
As it is for your descendants.
You may never name any descendant Lela.
Your descendants are prohibited
From bathing in this stream.”

Ali-the-eel next taught his elder brothers songs no human being had ever heard and dances no one had ever danced, telling them that only they and their clan descendants had the rights to the traditions.  These things accomplished, he slammed his head against a boulder, and the head of an eel emerged.  Ali’s transformation was now total, and the eel left.

Upon receiving these instructions, the elder brothers honored their founder by calling themselves “the people of the eel.”  Then they went their separate ways.  Today, people of the eel clan can be found throughout East Timor.

Means of instruction

In East Timor as elsewhere, folktales relate the adventures of animals and human beings.  They are recited for sheer pleasure rather than as interpretive charters, but they often deliver moral lessons, especially to the younger members of society for whom the tales provide a means of instruction in values.  In this way, folk experience is transmitted down the generations, with each generation making its own contributions so that the accumulated wisdom of the ancestors becomes available to a new generation.

The plot may revolve around the contrasting personalities of a pair of antagonists, such as we find in the North American folktales featuring Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, who constantly strive to outdo each other.  In East Timor, two stock characters are Monkey and Shark, whose never-ending ploys to outwit each other reveal clearly defined personal strengths and weaknesses, qualities that listeners identity with or assign to their fellows.