EARLY KNIVES AND FORKS

Evening Star, Issue 22209, 11 December 1935, Page 16

EARLY KNIVES AND FORKS

Knives and spoons have been in use for eating from early times, but until the early sixteenth century knives were not placed on the table, diners being expected to carry them on their person. Fingers were used chiefly in the Middl' Ages; sometimes delicately—Chaucer prioress did not wet “ hir fyngres in hir sauco deepe ” —and more often not, to judge from Alexander Barclay, who, describing a Court feast as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, recommended the use of “ gloves of mayle ” at tabic in case fingers got cut off in the general ( confusion of hacking at food. The use of forks at table was an Italian fashion which was not introduced into England until the reign of James I. Forks had been known before, but all through the Middle Ages they were luxuries. Thomas Coryate, writing in 1611 of his travels, noted that forks were used at table in Italy by both rich and poor, but that the custom was not adopted by any other nation in Christendom; he himself was nicknamed “ Furcifer ” by his friends for using them..