Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Harnham. 203 
knife; and in fact by any relic whatsoever. Neither was there a 
single example of the sword, so generally met with in Anglo-Saxon 
interments, nor, excepting the beads, any glass. A gold ring 
exactly resembling a modern wedding ring, found on No. 40, is 
stated to be unique in a burial of this period. 
The fork (Fig. 9) placed with the knife under the arm of skeleton 
No. 48 is of very rare occurrence. The only other instance of the 
discovery of one that from its size may be supposed to have been 
used for eating with, was in the year 1837, at the small hamlet of 
Sevington in the parish of Leigh-Delamere, in North Wilts (Fig. 11). 
An account, with an engraving of it, was published in the Arch- 
eologia. Some labourers making a drain at the back of Mr. 
Gough’s farm house discovered at the depth of two or three feet 
the decayed remains of a box, in which had been deposited seventy 
Saxon pennies of a.p. 806-890, with various relics all of Saxon 
manufacture, and amongst them a silver two-pronged fork and 
spoon, both of one style of workmanship; the spoon having traces 
of Runic work upon it, which were not seen in the fork. The 
genuineness of an Anglo-Saxon silver fork was naturally at first 
disputed, but all the other objects being unquestionably of that 
period, there is no reason for denying the same antiquity to the 
fork. We have now another specimen in the Harnham excava- 
tions: but this is of iron with a buckhorn handle, much less 
elegant in its shape than the Sevington curiosity.1 
1 How the world contrived until comparatively a late period to get through 
its dinners, especially its hot ones, without the help of so useful, and to us essential, 
an instrument as a fork, is a matter of astonishment. But such appears to have 
been the case. If an expression used by Horace is to be understood as of 
general application, we must infer that in the Augustan age, and even at the 
very Augustan dinner table itself, he achieved his repasts ‘‘manibus unctis,”’ 
with greasy fingers. Still, specimens of ancient Roman forks have occasionally 
been met with in Italy, and the modern use seems to have been adopted by us 
from that country. ‘Tom Coryate, the odd traveller of A.p. 1600, was one of the 
first who introduced it. He says that ‘‘he observed a custom in all those Italian 
cities and towns through which he passed, that was not used in any other coun- 
try that he saw in his travels, neither did he think that any other nation of 
