In Norway, Sweden and Finland, the name day for derivations of Erik and Eirik is 18 May, commemorating the death of Saint King Eric IX of Sweden, founder of the royal House of Eric.

It was the first kind word he had had since the morning, and after his troubles kindness melted him. He felt half inclined to cry, and for a few moments could say nothing in reply to Russell’s soothing words. But the boy’s friendliness went far to comfort him, and at last, shaking hands with him, he said—Very happily the next month glided away; a new life seemed opened to Eric in the world of rich affections which had unfolded itself before him. His parents—above all, his mother—were everything that he had longed for; and Vernon more than fulfilled to his loving heart the ideal of his childish fancy. He was never tired of playing with and patronising his little brother, and their rambles by stream and hill made those days appear the happiest he had ever spent. Every evening (for having lived all his life at home, he had not yet laid aside the habits of early childhood) he said his prayers by his mother’s knee; and at the end of one long summer’s day, when prayers were finished, and full of life and happiness he lay down to sleep, “Oh, mother,” he said, “I am so happy—I like to say my prayers when you are here.” In Estonia and Finland (where Fenno-Swedish remains an official minority language), the standard Nordic name form Erik is found, but it may also be spelled phonetically as Eerik ( Finnish: [ˈeːrik]), in accordance with Finnic language orthography, along with a slew of other unique Balto-Finnic variant forms including Eerikki, Eero, Erki and Erkki. [12] [13] [14] [15] CHAPT. II. — MASTURBATION IN CHILDHOOD. On the whole, I am disposed to hope that in most public schools, the feeling is strongly against these vile practices. Still, every now and then, facts leak out, which show, that, even into these establishments, evil influences sometimes find their way, and the destructive habit may take root and become common. In private schools, however, which are to a great extent free from the control of that healthy public opinion that, even among boys, has so salutary an effect, there is too much reason to fear that this scourge of our youth prevails to an alarming extent. Let's begin then by saying that my problem is not the writing. Farrar wrote quite well. The problem is the moral priggishness, the excessive sentimentality embittered by ruthlessly denying any possibility of redemption.

He found himself in a high airy room, with three large windows opening towards the sea. At one end was the master’s throne, and facing it, all down the room, were desks and benches, along which the boys were sitting at work. Every one knows how very confusing it is to enter a strange room full of strange people, and especially when you enter it from a darker passage. Eric felt dazzled, and not seeing the regular route to the master’s desk, went towards it between two of the benches. As these were at no great distance from each other, he stumbled against several legs on his way, and felt pretty sure that they were put out on purpose to trip him, especially by one boy, who pretended to be much hurt, drew up his leg, and began rubbing it, ejaculating sotto voce, “Awkward little fool.”

My Book Notes

Erich Muhsfeldt, German SS officer at Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps executed for war crimes This was pretty awful. I thought it might be one of those archetypal British school boys books. I rather liked Stalky and Company when I read it, both as a youth and again as a more "mature" person. A year of so ago, I tried Tom Brown's School Days and found it unreadable, so I gave up on it. Anyway, perhaps this book is also meant to be a British school boy book, but it was also flagrantly written to provide moral teaching to young boys. What it actually shows, however, is a complete moral bankruptcy on the part of the author. Then why don’t you say what you mean?” Eric moved his foot impatiently at this ungracious reception; but as he seemed to have no redress, he pulled the Caesar nearer towards him. Along with Talbot Baines Reed's The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's and Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays, this book was one of the three most popular boys' books in mid-Victorian Britain. The school is a thinly disguised cross between Farrar's own school King William's College in the Isle of Man, and Marlborough College, at which he was the master.

What? I’m a liar, am I? Oh, we shall take this kind of thing out of you, you young cub; take that;” and a heavier blow followed. Eric could not, and would not, brook his bullying with silence. His resentment was loud and stinging, and, Ishmaelite as Barker was, even his phlegmatic temperament took fire when Eric shouted his fierce and uncompromising retorts in the hearing of the others. The simple truth was, that poor Mr Lawley was a little wrong in the head. A scholar and a gentleman, early misfortunes and an imprudent marriage had driven him to the mastership of the little country grammar school; and here the perpetual annoyance caused to his refined mind by the coarseness of clumsy or spiteful boys, had gradually unhinged his intellect. Often did he tell the boys “that it was an easier life by far to break stones by the roadside than to teach them;” and at last his eccentricities became too obvious to be any longer overlooked.

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A few obvious things, first. One is that, as a Victorianist, my perspective on ‘sexuality’ in this period has been shaped in part by reading Foucault’s Histoire de la sexualité, especially vol 1, la volonté de savoir (1976; English translation The Will to Knowledge 1978) as an impressionable young PhD student. Here Foucault dismisses the so-called ‘repressive hypothesis’, demonstrating that rather than suppressing sexuality from the 17th to the mid-20th century, western society opened itself to discourses of sex in a wealth of new ways, from scientific and pseudo-scientific ‘classification’ approaches to more confessional and personal accounts, right through to a mushrooming cultural subterraneana of porn. Foucault argues that ‘modernity’ is in part characterised by a restless urge to discover the ‘truth’ of sex. According to Foucault modern-day individuals are ‘other Victorians’; the inheritors of an epoch in which people’s identities became increasingly tied to their sexuality. The most common spelling across Fennoscandia and in the Netherlands is Erik. In Norway, another form of the name (which has kept the Old Norse diphthong) Eirik ( Norwegian: [ˈæ̂ɪrɪk]) is also commonly used. [8] The modern Icelandic version is Eiríkur ( Icelandic: [ˈeiːˌriːkʏr̥]), [9] [10] [11] while the modern Faroese version is Eirikur.

Instantly there was a rush for caps, and the boys poured out in a confused and noisy stream, while at the same moment the other schoolrooms disgorged their inmates. Eric naturally went out among the last; but just as he was going to take his cap, Barker seized it, and flung it with a whoop to the end of the passage, where it was trampled on by a number of the boys as they ran out. Now, Eric, now or never! Life and death, ruin and salvation, corruption and purity, are perhaps in the balance together, and the scale of your destiny may hang on a single word of yours. Speak out, boy! Tell these fellows that unseemly words wound your conscience; tell them that they are ruinous, sinful, damnable; speak out and save yourself and the rest. Virtue is strong and beautiful, Eric, and vice is downcast in her awful presence. Lose your purity of heart, Eric, and you have lost a jewel which the whole world, if it were “one entire and perfect chrysolite,” cannot replace. [1:9 ] The author was a cleric and headmaster who was a pallbearer and preacher at Charles Darwin's funeral, and the grandfather of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. This novel was hugely influential in late Victorian England, though it fell out of fashion long ago (in Kipling's Stalky and Co, written a generation later, one of the schoolboy characters says, "Let's have no beastly Eric-ing here").The first element, ei- may be derived from the older Proto-Norse * aina(z), meaning "one, alone, unique", [1] as in the form Æ∆inrikr explicitly, but it could also be from * aiwa(z) "everlasting, eternity", [2] as in the Gothic form Euric. [3] The second element - ríkr stems either from Proto-Germanic * ríks "king, ruler" (cf. Gothic reiks) or the therefrom derived * ríkijaz "kingly, powerful, rich, prince"; from the common Proto-Indo-European root * h₃rḗǵs. [4] The name is thus usually taken to mean "sole ruler, autocrat" or "eternal ruler, ever powerful". [5] Eric used in the sense of a proper noun meaning "one ruler" may be the origin of Eriksgata, and if so it would have meant "one ruler's journey". [6] The tour was the medieval Swedish king's journey, when newly elected, to seek the acceptance of peripheral provinces. I hope so. But,” — he added after a pause — “his works do follow him. Look there!” He took a large stone and threw it into the Silverburn stream; there was a great splash, and the ever-widening circles of blue ripple broke the surface of the water, dying away one by one in the sedges on the bank. “There,” he said, “see how long those ripples last, and how numerous they are.” Yes, you bumptious young owl, it is, and that too;” and a tolerably smart slap on the face followed—leaving a red mark on a cheek already aflame with anger and indignation,—“should you like a little more?” It certainly was amazing, but also appalling. That'll teach you, Eric, now you've killed your best friend, your brother, your mother...