whereby it may be used to tie up bundles, nor yet should
it bounce if inadvertently dropped on the kitchen floor.

Lady Llanover's Toasted Welsh Rabbit

Cut a slice of the real Welsh cheese made of sheep's and cow's
milk; toast it at the fire on both sides, but not so much as to
drop (melt). Toast on one side a piece of bread less than 1/4
inch thick, to be quite crisp, and spread it very thinly with
fresh, cold butter on the toasted side. (It must not be
saturated.) Lay the toasted cheese upon the untoasted bread side
and serve immediately on a very hot plate. The butter on the
toast can, of course, be omitted. (It is more frequently eaten
without butter.)

From this original toasting of the cheese many Englishmen still call
Welsh Rabbit "Toasted Cheese," but Lady Llanover goes on to point out
that the Toasted Rabbit of her Wales and the Melted or Stewed Buck
Rabbit of England (which has become our American standard) are as
different in the making as the regional cheeses used in them, and she
says that while doctors prescribed the toasted Welsh as salubrious for
invalids, the stewed cheese of Olde England was "only adapted to
strong digestions."

English literature rings with praise for the toasted cheese of Wales
and England. There is Christopher North's eloquent "threads of
unbeaten gold, shining like gossamer filaments (that may be pulled
from its tough and tenacious substance)."

Yet not all of the references are complimentary.

Thus Shakespeare in _King Lear_:

Look, look a mouse!
Peace, peace;--this piece of toasted cheese will do it.

And Sydney Smith's:

Old friendships are destroyed by toasted cheese, and hard salted
meat has led to suicide.

But Khys Davis in _My Wales_ makes up for such rudenesses:

_The Welsh Enter Heaven_

The Lord had been complaining to St. Peter of the dearth of good
singers in Heaven. "Yet," He said testily, "I hear excellent
singing outside the walls. Why are not those singers here with
me?"

St. Peter said, "They are the Welsh. They refuse to come in; they
say they are happy enough outside, playing with a ball and boxing
and singing such songs as '_Suspan Fach_'"

The Lord said, "I wish them to come in here to sing Bach and
Mendelssohn. See that they are in before sundown."

St. Peter went to the Welsh and gave them the commands of the
Lo