Welsh rarebit fish called bummalo)". The entry in Merriam-Webster's "Dictionary of English Usage" is "Welsh rabbit, Welsh rarebit" and states: "When Francis Grose defined Welsh rabbit in "A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue" in 1785, he mistakenly indicated that rabbit was a corruption of "rarebit". It is not certain that this erroneous idea originated with Grose..." In his 1926 edition of the "Dictionary of Modern English Usage", the grammarian H. W. Fowler states a forthright view: "Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right. Welsh Rarebit is stupid and wrong." The notion that toasted cheese was a favourite dish irresistible to the Welsh
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend McCay signed a contract to collaborate on it with music by Max Hirschfeld and lyrics by George Henry Payne and Robert Gilbert Welch. Film pioneer Edwin S. Porter produced a seven-minute live-action film adaptation called "The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend" in 1906 for the Edison Company. The Fiend was played by John P. Brawn, who is tormented by imps in his bed, which flies through the air and leaves him hanging from a steeple—a scene similar to that of an early strips that ran on January 28, 1905. McCay produced four hand-drawn animated films based upon his "Rarebit Fiend"