Fag

“ The boy who gave good advice, while they were on the fire, took part in a rag that which was going on in the passage; the result was that the eggs remained seven minutes in boiling water. They were hard. When the fag-master pointed this out and asked his fag what he meant by it, the boy who gave good advice persisted in his statement that they had been exactly three minutes and a half in the saucepan, and that he had timed them by his watch. So the fag-master caned him for telling lies.
The boy who gave good advice grew into a man and went to the university. ”

“ And it's awful fun, I can tell you, to see the way some of the fags get riled at cricket! You get a feller to give you a few balls, just for practice, and you hit the ball into another feller's ground; and then you tell your fag to go and pick it up. So he goes to do it, when the other feller sings out, 'Don't touch that ball, or I'll lick you!' So you tell the fag to come to you, and you say, 'Why don't you do as I tell you?' And he says, 'Please, sir!' and then the little beggar blubbers. So you say to him, 'None of that, sir! Touch your toes!' We always make 'em wear straps on purpose. ”

“ You show weakness, think of your dear ma, mayhap, and begin to cry: it's all over with you; the whole school is at you—upper boys and under, big and little; the dirtiest little fag in the place will pipe out blaggerd names at you, and takes his pewny tug at your tail. ”

“ The fag-master is the protector of his fags, and responsible for their happiness and good conduct. In cases of bullying or injustice their appeal is to him, not to the form or house master, and, except in the gravest cases, all such cases are dealt with by the fag-master on his own responsibility and without report to the master. Until recent years a fag’s duties included such humble tasks as blacking boots, brushing clothes, and cooking breakfasts, and there was no limit as to hours; almost all the fag’s spare time being so monopolized. ”

“ These were the principal duties of the fags in the house. From supper until nine o'clock three fags taken in order stood in the passages, and answered any praepostor who called “Fag,” racing to the door, the last comer having to do the work. This consisted generally of going to the buttery for beer and bread and cheese (for the great men did not sup with the rest, but had each his own allowance in his study or the fifth-form room) , cleaning candlesticks and putting in new candles, toasting cheese, bottling beer, and carrying messages about the house ”

“ His severest duties as a fag are to cook breakfast and supper in his fag-master's room; but in many of the houses the boys eat their meals together, so the fags have a pretty easy time of it. In fact, altogether too much has been said about the tyranny and brutality of fagging. Most small boys are glad enough to be with the big boys, and a Senior who plays football or rows well might have as many youngsters to wait on him as he chose. Fag-masters are often the fags' best friends, and even at the universities afterward keep a kindly eye upon them. ”

“ A bonnet is an epitome of fag-ends. The poor crazy creatures in the asylum, who pick up any rag, or wisp of straw, or scrap of tin, they may find, and wear it proudly upon their frocks, are not a whit more absurd. ”

“ The youth of seventeen had glanced at the fair, delicate child, who looked up at him with awe, not unmixed with alarm, and in his heart he formed a resolve that the boy thus placed in his care should be protected from the overbearing oppression to which a fag at a public school was in those days so frequently subjected. ”

“ If a boy is in his first term he must keep his hands out of his pockets. If you see a boy with one hand in, he will, perhaps, be in the second term; after that both may be put in the pockets. The duties of fags are less irksome than once they were, but (such as they are) strictly exacted. They may be called to run errands and make themselves generally useful. The house fags have to "fag out" the "dens" of their superiors, to light their fires, to make toast for them at tea, and so forth. ”

“ There may be—though many schoolboys will, perhaps, think it scarcely possible—there may be, in the compass of the civilised world, some persons so barbarously ignorant as not to know what is meant by the term fag. ”

“ Sometimes it happens that a fag turns out a great cricketer or oarsman, in which case his old fag-master is as proud of him as of a younger brother. Like as not in after-life a country parson can look back upon the time when he fagged the bishop of his diocese. Like tunding or smacking, fagging is at bottom more humane than the neglect which a small boy suffers at an American school.
The boys are kept very much together in each house by their meals and the early hour of "lock-up" ”

“ Bouncer, subs. (Stonyhurst) .—A ball kicked from the hand before it reaches the ground: Stonyhurst-football (q.v.) .
Boy, subs. (Harrow) .—Specifically, a fag a grade above the lowest form. See ante. As a verb, TO BOY = to call for a fag: all fags are summoned by a long drawn-out shout.
Brick (and Clat) , subs. (Stonyhurst) .—The names given to the two rival camps in a certain notorious quasi-insurrection in the College some fifty years ago. A full account appears in Fitzgerald’s Stonyhurst Memories. ”

“ Sept.—I have been racket-fagging all afternoon. It is such dismal work. You have to stand in one corner of the square court and throw all the balls that come that way to the ‘feeders,’ who throw them to the players when they are wanted. The great amusement of P., one of those I fag for, is to hit the racket-balls with all his might at the fags, and he tried to cut me off a great many times, but missed. At last P. said, ‘I’ll go and get another fag instead of that young beast Hare,’ and he went, but he never came back, or the fag either. ”

“ And soon it crept out that a lot of the fags were in league, and Flashman excited his associates to join him in bringing the young vagabonds to their senses; and the house was filled with constant chasings, and sieges, and lickings of all sorts; and in return, the bullies' beds were pulled to pieces and drenched with water, and their names written up on the walls with every insulting epithet which the fag invention could furnish. ”

“ The schoolboy proposition is: ‘I am stronger than you, therefore you shall fag for me.’ Its grown up form is: ‘I am cleverer than you, therefore you shall fag for me.’ The state of things we produce by submitting to this, bad enough even at first, becomes intolerable when the mediocre or foolish descendants of the clever fellows claim to have inherited their privileges. ”

“ Slack, verb (Durham) .—To sell: specifically, to dispose of property to a dealer in second-hand goods. [From the name of a second-hand bookseller in Durham.]
Slave-driver, subs. (Harrow) .—A fag-master: exclusively at cricket.
1890. Great Public Schools, p. 95. The upper ground on these days is given up to practice at the nets for the Eleven and the “Sixth Form” game, and to practice in fielding and catching. Boys below the Removes have to fag for them, and these fags are managed by SLAVE-DRIVERS (three or four boys appointed for the purpose) . ”

“ All I can say is that you're foolish not taking a good fag when it don't cost you nothing. You don't catch me refusing a free fag even when I don't want to smoke. I takes it and puts it in my cap for when I do. Pounds I've saved that way, pounds and pounds. ”

“ I am very tolerably well now, and think I have recovered altogether, though I verily believe I shall not be able ever again to fag so much; indeed, I shall never wish to do so in the same way. You will understand a good deal of the way in which fagging hard is so frequently ruinous both to body and mind, from an article in the ‘Rugby Magazine,’ No. III., which I hope you will like as much as the people on this side the Atlantic [Pg 63] (I mean the article entitled ‘A Schoolboy’s Story’) ; I think you will see a good deal in that to explain it. ”

“ Although greatly disappointed, Tom sees no way to refuse the request, and at the beginning of the selection here given we find him with young Arthur in the boys' dormitory.]
[Footnote 3: The word form is used in English schools instead of class.]
[Footnote 1: In English schools the name fag is applied to a boy who does, under compulsion, menial work for a boy of a higher form. The fagging system used to be greatly abused, the boys of the higher classes treating their fags with the greatest cruelty; but the bad points of the custom have been largely done away with.] ”

“ These boys constituted what may perhaps be called a neutral or buffer state between the fagmasters and their fags. The Sixth Form boys chose fags in turn according to an order of precedence which depended upon their rank in the school, and the choice might be made either by calling a boy’s name, or, if his name were not known, by walking up to him and laying a hand upon his shoulder. When every Sixth Form boy had chosen a fag, the choice began over again, and so continued until the number of the fags was exhausted, every one of them having now received his fagmaster. ”

“ It is side for a fag to swear, and an oath, except on rare occasions, is considered beneath the dignity of a blood. He is supposed to dwell in an Olympian fastness beyond the reach of inconvenience, where the need for violent language is infrequently presented. For the second yearer, however, life is full of emotion that demands to be registered forcibly.
I can never quite see why so many people refuse to believe that a schoolboy's conversation is punctuated with 'damns' and 'bloodys.' We employ the idiom of our surroundings. A boy does not swear at home; at school he does. ”

“ It's all the very vanity of vanities—as it's said somewhere in the Bible—and no mistake! Fag, fag, fag, all one's days, and—what for? Thirty-five pounds a-year, and 'no advance!' (Here occurred a pause and revery, from which he was roused by the clangor of the church-bells.) ”

“ The hard life of a fag—for in those days it was a hard life—and the unwholesome food disagreed with me so much that my stepmother, the Duchess of Bedford, insisted that I should be taken away and sent to a private tutor.’ At Westminster School physical hardihood was always encouraged. ”

“ The small boy thus enslaved is termed a fag, and his duties are to do everything the larger boy finds it impossible or disagreeable to do himself. If the small boy performs these duties zealously and good-humouredly, he is only kicked and driven about like a dog, and survives to become a fifth, and eventually a sixth form boy, and takes his change out of fags of his own. If he sulks, or neglects orders, he is either half or three-quarters murdered, according to the hands he falls into, and is usually taken away from the school, or otherwise expended, before he reaches hobble-de-hoy’s estate. ”

“ They all turned round with a start, and the speaker got up from a bench on which he had been lying unobserved, and gave himself a shake. He was a big, loose-made fellow, with huge limbs which had grown too far through his jacket and trousers. “Don't you go to anybody at all—you just stand out; say you won't fag. They'll soon get tired of licking you. ”

“ For there are few things more catching than bad temper and bad manners. When Sir Anthony Absolute bullied Captain Absolute, the latter went out and bullied his man Fag, whereupon Fag went downstairs and kicked the page-boy. ”

“ Double-ruled, subs. (Harrow) .—Punishment paper. [Ruled double like a copy-book.]
Dough, subs. (general) .—Pudding.
Doul, subs. (Shrewsbury and Durham) .—A fag. Also as verb. Obsolete at Durham. Cf. Dowlings.
1867. Collins, The Public Schools [Shrewsbury] , p. 250. Four boys are “put on” by rotation every week as general fags for the head common room, whose duties in modern days consist chiefly in fetching and carrying. These fags are called DOULS (δουλος) in the classical Shrewsbury vernacular.
Dove, subs. (Cambridge: obsolete) .—A member of St. Catharine’s College. ”

“ What other can be expected of the fag-end of the worst finished part of vitiated society, upon whom the pattern of their maker is scarcely distinguishable? and whose minds are embued with so small a portion of his grace, that they appear a distinct race of beings from these among whom they constantly dwell, and upon whom they hourly make prey. ”

“ Does the 'fairie' or 'fag' really exist? This question has been asked time and again. There is no doubt but that this type of degenerate is a reality. [Unprejudiced science has not yet decided the matter of the degeneracy of the androgyne in general, as I have already shown in detail. There exists as much evidence that the bisexual is a superman or genius as that he or she is a degenerate. The truth of the matter probably is that degenerates are no commoner per thousand among bisexuals than among the sexually full-fledged, but that geniuses occur far oftener.] ”

“ It’s rather funny to hear you talking of being captain over the boys, because the day we heard that you were coming, they all said that if they were to be bothered with a third girl in the house, you would have to make yourself useful, and that you should be their fag. ”

“ And what use do they make of the faggot when they have it? asks the preacher. Why they make a fire with it, on which they may jump, till they have stamped it out!
And in speaking of the obedience of servants to their masters, he says it should resemble that of the man who is being shaved. Such a man turns his head this way, or that way, puts his chin up, or puts it down, in obedience to the slightest gesture and sign of the barber.
Faber is fond of quoting popular sayings and proverbs ”