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
History of the Welsh language (Breton, Cornish, and the extinct Cumbric). It is not clear when Welsh became distinct. Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that the evolution in syllabic structure and sound pattern was complete by around 550, and labeled the period between then and about 800 "Primitive Welsh". This Primitive Welsh may have been spoken in both Wales and the Hen Ogledd ("Old North"), the Brythonic-speaking areas of what is now northern England and southern Scotland, and therefore been the ancestor of Cumbric as well as Welsh. Jackson, however, believed that the two varieties were already distinct by that time. The earliest Welsh poetry –