Let's imagine that 300 years or so ago an English host served a guest melted cheese on toast and was asked 'What's that?' Thinking a dumb question deserved a facetious answer, the host said, 'That's a Welsh rabbit.' The term caught on and was used in that form until know-it-alls began to say, 'this word "rabbit" doesn't make sense because the dish has no rabbit meat', so people accustomed to delicacies (melted cheese on toast?) must have changed 'rabbit' to 'rare bit'.

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Ms. Riely deserves praise for writing simply that 'Welsh rabbit' is also spelled 'rarebit'. Some writers haven't been so sanguine about this fact. H.W. Fowler's dictum in his monumental Modern English Usage is that 'Welsh rabbit is amusing & right, & Welsh rarebit stupid & wrong.'

William B. McColly,
Hershey, Pennsylvania

5,500 SARMATIANS

Your interesting article, 'The Quest for the Historical Arthur' (March 1998, page 12), and beautiful illustrations on this subject have convinced me that the British have become a gullible nation of romantics. Before I left England in 1950, I used to think that we were common-sense, pragmatic people. Recent historical events and the reverence accorded the Arthurian legend convince me I was wrong.

The magazine Archeology, in its January 1997 issue, has a most interesting article by Professor Scott-Littleton, titled 'Were Sarmatians the Source of the Arthurian Legend?' Briefly, in AD 175, Marcus Aurelius ordered a troop of 5,500 Sarmatian cavalry, under a commander named Artorius Castus, to the Lancashire area to keep order. He was not a king, but certainly a strong man; perhaps a viceroy for Rome. The Sarmatians seem to have come from the area of the Don, and like the later Cossacks were great riders. So the first similarity is the name, Artorius, and the second the cavalry (knights?) under him. Third, a tribe known as the Ossetians (from much the same area) had a legend about a lost magical cup, long before the Christians invented the Holy Grail.

Finally, the sword. The Ossetians had a great leader who on his deathbed asked that his sword be thrown into the sea. When this was done the sea frothed up red around it. The origin of this story may well be a thousand years older, going back to King Shalmaneser III, the tyrant of Nineveh.

Eirene S. Druce,
Richmond, British Columbia

CROSS WORDS

As a nurse and one who has worked with the severely retarded for many years, I am compelled to write my utter dismay at something in the June/ July issue.

In these days of more awareness of the disabled I find your clue in the crossword puzzle (page 71) for number 11 across most offensive. The idea of the labels 'half-wit' and 'feeble-minded' is in this day and age quite unacceptable to myself and many friends, and you should print an apology.

I should hope that in future more thought would go into your crossword puzzles.

Stephanie Russell-Heller,
Bellevue, Nebraska

Editor's note: We certainly regret any offence that our crossword clue may have given, and readily apologize for any discomfort it may have caused. At the same time, however, we hasten to point out that we did not use these words to 'label' anyone; we simply recognized them, for better or worse, as parts of the English language.

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