Folklore of Sub-Saharan and South African peoples

Abstract

The article explains the “dark word” karotok, recorded in “ Russian fairy tales” by A.N. Afanasyev. The semantics of the word is expanded upon basing on the logic of fairytale tripling, while references to other variants of the tale allow to interpret the word as a form, distorted by folk etymology, of the word kamortok that was in use in the 18^th century (German Kammertuch, Dutch kamerdoek. Both of these are calques from the French toile de Cambrai ‘cloth of Cambrai’). In modern Russian another name for this fabric has prevailed - batist (from the French batiste).