spalpeen

A late 18th-century term, from Irish spailpín.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /spalˈpiːn/

spalpeen (plural spalpeens)

1. (Ireland) A poor migratory farm worker in Ireland, often viewed as a rascal or mischievous and cunning person.
2. (Ireland, sometimes affectionate) A good-for-nothing person.

• 1979, Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French (New York: The New York Review of Books):

  "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."

• 2002, Joseph O'Conner, Star of the Sea (Vintage 2003), page 25:

  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.

• guttersnipe

• merriam-webster.com.
• .
• encarta MSN.
• Spalpeen. The New Oxford American Dictionary. Second ed.