In
British public schools, a fag is a young student who runs errands and does chores for an older boy. There are no connotations of
homosexuality. You can find this term in a number of
Victorian novels, but I have no idea if this term is still in use today.
I was reading
E.W Hornung’s
Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman this morning, and right there on page one
Bunny Danvers blurts out to
Raffles "But I fagged for you at school, and you said you remembered me." I was stunned, not because of what I thought the implications were, but because I never thought a Victorian era novel would be so explicit about
the love that dare not speak its name. Turns out, after a small bit of research, I was wrong, and Bunny and Raffles will only be together in erotic
fan fiction.