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 strip. Despite the strip's bleak view, McCay's work was so popular that William Randolph Hearst hired him in 1911 with a star's salary. Hearst editor Arthur Brisbane deemed McCay's work "serious, not funny", and had the cartoonist give up his comic strips (including "Rarebit Fiend" and "Nemo") to work full-time illustrating editorials. Scholars such as Claude Moliterni, Ulrich Merkl, Alfredo Castelli, and others have hunted down what they believe to have influenced McCay's work on "Dream of the Rarebit Fiend". Among the possible influences are Edward Lear's popular "The Book of Nonsense" (1870), Gelett Burgess' "The Burgess Nonsense Book" (1901),