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
The Rabbit (Manet 1881) art firm, Bernheim-Jeune. In 1917 "The Rabbit" was purchased from Bernheim-Jeune by the Welsh philanthrapist Gwendoline Davies, who in 1918 exhibited it at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. On Gwendoline's death in 1951, she bequeathed her collection of Impressionist works to the National Museum of Wales, among them "The Rabbit". As of 2012 it is on view at the National Museum Cardiff in gallery 11. "The Rabbit" is painted in a bold and loose style, and is intended to be viewed from a distance. This is in stark contrast to an earlier work by Manet also entitled the "Rabbit"