Note 8 — Chapter XV
Reading edition
Forks are an Italian invention: old Coryate, who introduced this “neatnesse” into Somersetshire, about 1600, was called furcifer by his friends. Alexander Barclay thus describes the previous English mode of eating, which sounds very ventaish, although worse mannered:—
“If the dishe be pleasaunt, eyther flesche or fische, Ten hands at once swarm in the dishe.”