Liver of the Dead

It's a strange tale and it goes like this:

In the village of Hammer near Czernikowo many years ago there lived a young married couple. The wife loved to eat liver and could not live if she didn't eat a liver every day. One day she sent her husband once again to town to fetch a liver. However, in Czernikowo the husband met a group of young merrymakers and went with them to a tavern, where he drank away all his money.

Sad, and without the liver, he made his way homeward. It was late. On his way he had to go through a great forest. Here he met a hunter, who asked him why he was so sad. The man told him everything, upon which the hunter said, "In the middle of the forest there is a clearing with a gallows, upon which a number of dead bodies are hanging. Take one of them down, cut out his liver, and give it to your wife. Tell her it is beef liver."

The man did just that.

When he arrived home his wife was at first angry because he had been away so long, but she calmed down as soon as she saw the liver, and began frying it. The man lay down and went to sleep.

Suddenly a white figure appeared at the window, and it cried into the room, "Everyone is asleep. The dogs are keeping watch in the yard. And you are standing there frying my liver."

The man was terrified, and in his fear he cried out to his wife that she should come to bed. But the wife wanted first to dip a little piece of bread into the gravy and taste it.

Meanwhile, the phantom, a white skeleton, had already entered the house, always calling out the same words again and again. The woman was not afraid, but asked the ghost, "Now, my little fellow, what happened to your flesh?"
The ghost replied, "The ravens ate it, and the wind blew it away."

Then the woman asked, "Now, my little fellow, what happened to your eyes and ears?"
And the ghost answered, "The ravens ate them, and the wind blew them away."

The woman asked, "Now, my little fellow, what happened to your liver?"
Then the ghost cried out, "You have it!" And with that he seized the woman and strangled her to death.

End of tale.

But why did the ghost strangle the woman? It was the man who was to blame, surely. And going by the ghost's pattern of logic, his fetish for lost body parts, a number of ravens should have also been strangled, not to mention worms, insects and bacterial life forms. I think the meaning of this runs deeper than the folk-practices that suggest not to meddle with the physical remains of the dead.

[A Polish folktale compiled by Otto Knoop in 1909, and translated by D. L. Ashliman.]