spalpeen

Noun

spalpeen (plural spalpeens)

1. (Ireland, ethnic, slur) A poor migratory farm worker in Ireland, often viewed as a rascal or mischievous and cunning person.
   • "And they stood you before the magistrates, like a spalpeen or a tinker." / "Sure the French wouldn't bring with them barrels of coppers for the spalpeens of Connaught. It is murder and bloodshed they would bring."1979, Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French, New York, N.Y.: The New York Review of Books
   • The men were mainly evicted farmers from Connaught and West Cork, beggared spalpeens from Carlow and Waterford; a cooper, some farriers, a horse-knacker from Kerry; a couple of Galway fishermen who had managed to sell their nets.2002, Joseph O’Conner, Star of the Sea, Vintage, published 2003, page 25
2. (Ireland, endearing, sometimes) A good-for-nothing person.
   • [A] fortunate accident […] happened to me when I was a very little boy. A good-hearted old Irish nurse (whom I shall not forget in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when I was making more noise than was necessary, and, swinging me round two or three times, d——d my eyes for "a skreeking...1840 February, Edgar A[llan] Poe, “Peter Pendulum, the Business Man”, in William E[vans] Burton, Edgar Allan Poe, editors, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and American Monthly Review, volume VI, number...
   • Tear and ages! excuse my vehaymence,
     But can't the spalpeens understand,
     That some bastes loike to take to the wather,
     Tho' some choose to stay upon land.1860 October 4, Melbourne Punch, page 83, column 2