Dream of the Rarebit Fiend Dream of the Rarebit Fiend Dream of the Rarebit Fiend is a newspaper comic strip by American cartoonist Winsor McCay, begun September 10, 1904. It was McCay's second successful strip, after "Little Sammy Sneeze" secured him a position on the cartoon staff of the "New York Herald". "Rarebit Fiend" appeared in the "Evening Telegram", a newspaper published by the "Herald". For contractual reasons, McCay signed the strip with the pen name "Silas". The strip had no continuity or recurring characters, but a recurring theme: a character has a nightmare or other bizarre dream, usually after eating a Welsh rarebit—a cheese-on-toast
Welsh rarebit this; what is more, Ben Jonson died almost a century before the term Welsh rabbit is first attested. According to the American satirist Ambrose Bierce, the continued use of "rarebit" was an attempt to rationalise the absence of rabbit, writing in his 1911 "Devil's Dictionary": "RAREBIT n. A Welsh rabbit, in the speech of the humorless, who point out that it is not a rabbit. To whom it may be solemnly explained that the comestible known as toad in the hole is really not a toad, and that "ris de veau à la financière" is not the smile of a