2134/18946
Michael Wilson
Michael
Wilson
"Johnny I Want My Liver Back”: revisiting a teenage folktale in the digital age
Loughborough University
2015
Teenage oral storytelling
Online storytelling
Folktales
Oral traditions
Ghost stories
Studies in the Creative Arts and Writing not elsewhere classified
2015-10-05 13:01:16
Conference contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/conference_contribution/_Johnny_I_Want_My_Liver_Back_revisiting_a_teenage_folktale_in_the_digital_age/9319745
In the early 1990s, whilst conducting fieldwork for doctoral research into the oral
narrative traditions of teenagers in Britain and Ireland, I collected many versions of
a story called ‘Johnny, I want My Liver Back’. The story was particularly popular
amongst younger teenagers and was a ‘jump’ story, a tale that employs a closing
formula that increases the tension of the narration and ends with the storyteller
shouting the final words in order to give the listener a start. The story tells of a
young boy (Johnny) who is sent on an errand to buy some liver for tea. On the way
he gets distracted and spends the money on sweets, so instead goes to the
graveyard and steals the liver from a freshly buried corpse. That evening the ghost
of the deceased returns to reclaim the stolen organ. It is a story that is primarily a
variant of ‘The Man from the Gallows’ (ATU 366), but also draws heavily from
some versions of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ (ATU 333), formerly ‘The Glutton’
(AT 333), notably the story of ‘Uncle Wolf,’ as published by Calvino in Italian
Folktales (1980). This chapter provides an analysis of the story, but also explores
how the story has fared in the hands of a new generation. Since then we have
witnessed the arrival of the internet, Web 2.0 and self-publication via platforms such as YouTube. This chapter explores the story in the online space and its
modern presentations in the global storytelling space. Through examples it shows
that oral narrative traditions appear to be alive and well amongst today’s teenagers.