Cannibal Floats on the Raft Under the Ice
Religious Fables, Folklore, Legends, and Stories
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Submitted by: Yuri Klitsenko

There was an old man, his wife and their two kids – a boy and a girl. Once upon a winter he went to the river to check his fishing net. He looked into the ice-hole and saw an old cannibal Chuoledi Polut under the ice. He floated on the raft down the river. Cannibal rushed the old man and trailed him to his place. The old man began to cry: “Let me go, and I’ll give your my children!”.

The cannibal released the old man, and then he came to his home and said to his children: “Go to the river and check our fishing net”. Brother and sister came up to the ice hole and Chuoledi Polut caught them and took them away on the raft.

From: "Yakutsky Kray" and Dr. Ludmila Nikolayevna Zhukova, Department of Philology, Yakutsk State University, Russia.

[Ed. Note] Stories like this one make us wonder about the way that humans turn away from the loving, compassionate, peaceful way of living that Jesus taught us, and instead try to justify violence. The man kills fish with no thought of their suffering, and because of this lack of empathy, and his sociopathic nature, he easily give his children to the cannibal in order to save his own life.

Yuri Klitsenko is a Russian living in Moscow.  He works for the Russian Orthodox Church.

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