THE RABBIT OR CONY 177 



by Bartlett to the " Himalayan " variety is, however, available (see 

 below, p. 198). 



Terminology : — There is no native name, either English or Celtic. 

 The usual names " cony " and " rabbit " are, as will be shown below, 

 both of French origin. 



" Rabbit " is pronounced also rabbidge {Dial. Diet.), rabbcrt (North 

 Devon), rabbut (Berkshire and Devon), and rappit (Cheshire and Lanca- 

 shire). Earlier forms are rabbette (1 5th and 16th centuries), rabet (15th to 

 17th centuries), rabbet (16th to 18th centuries), as in Pennant, Bingley, 

 Jenyns, and Donovan), rabbattc (16th century), rabytt (17th century), 

 rabit (18th century). The source appears to be the Walloon form 

 rabett, still in common use at Liege, from Middle Dutch robbe = a 

 "rabet" with the suffix ett (Skeat). Ultimately of French origin, it is 

 borrowed by Gaelic writers and spelt in various ways as rabaid, rabbaid, 

 or rabbait. Although frequent in combinations, " rabbit " is a compara- 

 tively modern word, not known fide the N. E. Diet, to have been in use 

 before 1398, when it occurs in a passage in Trevisa : " Conynges bringeth 

 forthe many rabettes." But Skeat informs me that in Grose's Anti- 

 quarian Repository, 1807, i., 78, there is a list of things provided for a 

 feast in the eleventh year of Richard II., i.e. in 1387-88. Along with 

 the poultry consumed are mentioned " six kiddes " and " viij dussen 

 rabettes," and in the third course they had " rabetts rostad." 



The above quotation indicates that " rabbit " was originally a 

 diminutive applied to the young of the cony, itself an older word, 

 as will be shown below. This fact is made clear from several sources. 

 Thus in the Promptorium Parvulorum, written in 1440 (Camden Soe. 

 Publie.,L ii., 1853, 421), a "rabet" is defined as a "yonge conye . . . 

 Cunicellus" Again, in The Boke of Nurture, dating from about a.d. 

 1460, by John Russell (ed. Early Eng. Text Soc , 29), directions are 

 given for carving the cony and also " rabettes," which are explained as 

 "sowkers" (sucklers). In The Boke of St Albans (i486), the definition 

 is further enlarged, and " a Bery (i.e., burrow) of conyis " (i.e., adults) is 

 mentioned, as well as " A Nest of Rabettis" (i.e., young) ; in fact, in the 

 fifteenth century the two were so clearly distinguished as to form 

 separate courses of the same feast (see below, p. 187). This use of the 

 words had not died out in 1575, when we read that "The Conie . . . 

 beareth hyr Rabettes xxx dayes, and then kindeleth " (The Noble Arte 

 of Venerie or Hunting, 1575, ch. 63, 178). 



" Cony " or " coney," various forms of which will be found in the 

 New English Dictionary, is, as stated above, the older name, but is also 

 comparatively modern. It occurs first in 1200, in the sense of the 

 skin or fur of the animal (see N. E. Diet.); again in 1292 in the Anglo- 

 Norman French of the lawyer Britton — " De veneysoun et de pessoun 

 et des coniys " ; and ten years later (1302), in English — " We shule flo 



