The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1896-02-10
TABLE KNIVES.
The saxOns and NOrmnns Used Their
weapons.

From the Philadelphia Ledger.
"Brutes feed; barbarians eat; men dine"
old Saying.
In the familiar phraseology Of the ia
Bile, we speak of knives. forks and
spoons" knives and forks or forks and
knives, but never "knives. spoons and
forks" Thus we ever relegate the spoon
to the odd or third place as not being IN
such close accord with the other two inn
PIGMENTS of eating. Yet there is neither
right nor reason in our so doing; the knife
and spoon have descended together from
primitive times, and compared with either
the fork is a mere tyro, an interloper, a
comparative infant in years, not yet two
centuries old in popular esteem.
1t would be mere waste of time and
space to enter into detail into the history
and antiquity of the knife-a necessity of
life to primitive man, whose very eXis-
tence depended upon ii as a weapon of Of
Tense and defense. OF more possible inter-
est no us may be the story of the eVOlu-
ton of the table knife as a useful article
of domestic economics. and the literary
illusions to the same during the interven-
ing centuries of descent.
We know that Egyptian knives of sabre
form, with straight copper blades, have
been found in the catacombs of Saccarah.
Homer alludes to the knife of his hero
Agamemmon, as well as to razors of brass.
The Romans had knives for pruning and
hunting. and the mincing knife of the RO
man cook was the most treasured imple-
ment of his skill.
But our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers
had the met-saeX, or eating knife, and
the nagel-saeX for cutting nails, the an
cestors of our pocket knife Later still
in Saxon annals we meet with the cnif,
bearing. the Danish origin of its new name
on its face.
The knife with its lockwood handle,
used by Thomas Beckett in cutting the eu-
logiae, or holy bread, may still be seen at
st. Andrews, Varcelli
sheffield cutlery has become a world
wide phrase, and deservedly SO, for it is
no mere modern one In the. Reeves
Tale 'Chaucer tells of the miller.
"A Sheffield thwitel bar be in his nose"
and the thwitel of five centuries ago still
has its descendants in use amngst peas.
whilst the whiting of a stick is perfect-
ly familiar to ALL
But the carrying of knives was by no
quarto of 1897 Juliet wears a knife in the
friar's cell and when she is about to take
the potion. In Ross church, in Hereford
purse and a knife at her girde
In the reign of James / of England a
lottery was held at the lord chief JUS
tlce's house and there Mrs. Hide won
"a pair of knives" on which were en-
graved these lines:
Fortune doth give these pair of knives
To cult the thread of love if It be not
true
Nowadays we never associate knives as
one of the necessities of a brides trous-
Seau, but rather regard them as an I'M
lucky gift. Yet in 1858 in a play the
witch of Edmonton" we read: but.
the new pair of Sheffield knives fitted both
to one sheath" Again in Dekker's
Match Me in London published in 1881,
the bride says to her Jealous husband:
See at my girdle hang my wedding
With those despatch me-"
How strange and seemingly erratic are
many of our superstitions. To give
knife, scissors, anything that cuts or
pricks, is still considered most unlucky,
and to prevent a break between lovers
or friends a coin or some small gift must
be given in return, so as to avoid such
misfortune. Then, too, what is avoided
in one country is practiced in another
Here in the southern states knives and
Bile. In Scotland such order would be
most unlucky equal in dire disaster to
the splitting of the salt.
From Puritan days to our own times is
no great historical jump, the period of
our development as a people seems so
short and we pride ourselves on our pro-
the wit who ridiculed our Puritan fore
fathers, makes his hero in 'Hudibras'-a
caricature of Sir Samuel Luke, one Of
CromwelPs otficers-use his knife to
Serve for battle or for dinner, as you
When it had slain Cheshire man would
toast a Cheshire cheese"
and again,
When it had stabbed or broke a, head
1t would scrape trenchers or chip bread"
We read of Mr.. Pepys, John Evelyn and
even Mr.. Pelham, in BUlwer Lytton's nov
ell, as carrying their ease of tools" Cknife
and SPOON with them, so that the Hosts
of former generations were not expected
to provide more than limited number
of carving or cutting knives. Let us try
to realize this.
From the days when clean knife pro-
vided for each guest represented wealth
and luxury, we have passed to the clean
knife provided for each course-an abso-
lutte necessity and no luxury Many of US
have in our possession as herlooms and
curiosities the sharp pointed table knives
of fifty years ago. Only half a century
since the rounded blade was first seen, its
introduction being advocated on the
grounds on safety for the mouth. We no
longer criticise the man who eats with
his knife in his mouth; for us he does not.
cannot exist. Yet he lived when two
knives placed for each guest was luxu-
rious style.
The gulf between him and us has been
bridged by bristling array of knives. and
could we restore him to life his hardest
lesson would be not as to the how but the
which TO use. For, strange to tell, we
now fulfill the homely proverb born of
his own day: Mean is much, but man
ners are more"