Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Dream of a Rarebit Fiend



Thomas Edison's 1903 film, àpropos of Doc 40 today. Welsh rarebit was such a fad at the begining of the last century that it inspired a comic strip, Winsor McCay's Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, a book, Harle Owen Cummins' Welsh Rabbit Tales (1902), and earned an entry in Ambrose Bierce's 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 calf prepared after the recipe of a she-banker.

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