Welsh rarebit cause boby, good roasted cheese." In Boorde's account, "cause boby" is the Welsh "", meaning "baked cheese", but whether it implies a recipe like Welsh rarebit is a matter of speculation. The word "rarebit" is a corruption of "rabbit", "Welsh rabbit" being first recorded in 1725 and the variant "Welsh rarebit" being first recorded in 1785 by Francis Grose. According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", 'Welsh rarebit' is an "etymologizing alteration. There is no evidence of the independent use of rarebit". The word "rarebit" has no other use than in Welsh rabbit. "Eighteenth-century English cookbooks reveal that it was then
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend rarebit theme instead of tobacco, and McCay complied. The strip appeared in a "Herald" subsidiary, the "Evening Telegram", and the "Herald"s editor required McCay to use a pseudonym for the strip work to keep it separate from his other work. McCay signed "Rarebit Fiend" strips as "Silas", a name he borrowed from a neighborhood garbage cart driver. After switching to William Randolph Hearst's "New York American" newspaper in 1911, McCay dropped the "Silas" pseudonym and signed his work with his own name. McCay married in 1891, and the marriage was not a happy one. According to McCay biographer John Canemaker,