Subject: ropaire 'rapparee' bandit

Culture: Catholic Irish

Setting: Protestant Ascendancy, Ireland 1691-1801

Context

* Walsh 1979 p88 (writing in 1847)

"The habits and usages which English writers of the sixteenth century impute to the 'wild Irish,' were not wholly extinct eighty years ago. Men from the woods and mountains infested the neighbourhood of populous towns, having holes and dens from which they retired, like wild beasts to their lair; when pursued, they thus suddenly sunk into the earth and disappeared, and were passed by their pursuers. They lived like the subjects of the Irish chieftain, who pronounced a malediction on any of his tribe that would dwell in a house built with hands. The den of the modern rapparee was usually in a situation commanding a view of the road, from which he could pounce, like a vulture on his quarry, on the passengers, and return with his prey to his rock."