Crabbed is an adjective I have heard in many Irish dialects from the Glens of Antrim to Limerick. It means, in describing a person, cantankerous, perverse. Crabbit is a common variant. It is a word of two syllables invariably.
Crab is also a verb. It means to find fault with, to make little of somebody or something. I have come across this in Antrim and in the language of Leinster Travellers. In that great glossary of Antrim and Down words compiled by W.H. Patterson in 1890, we find: "A couldn't thole bein' crabbed at, when A didn't do nothin' ondaicent."
A member of the Connors clan told me the other day about his efforts to sell a mare to a member of another clan: "He went too far crabbin' the mare, so I tould him that I wouldn't sell her to him for any money."
The primary reference was to the crooked or wayward gait of the crustacean, and the contradictory, perverse and fractious disposition which this expressed, according to Oxford.
The Germans have krabbe, whence, according to the grammarian Grimm, `because these animals are malicious and do not easily let go when they are seized, Low German has ene lutje krabbe, a small crab; a small, cantankerous, ill-conditioned man.' East Frisian, too, also has krabbe, a crab; by transference, a cantankerous man.
I am reminded of the story told by the late R.B. Walsh, the UCD linguist, about the comment of a large cattle dealer who got on the train with him at Mullinavat, Co Kilkenny, the day Germany set Europe alight by invading Poland. He said aloud as he glanced at the front page of his paper: "Well, isn't Hitler the crabbed little bastard, for the size of him?"
The earliest use of crabbed in literature is in an anti-Semitic reference in the 1340 Cursor Mundi. The York Mysteries of c.1440 has: "For women are crabbed, that comes with their kind."
I have heard crab, meaning to scratch, in the north. It is related to the above crab; and it's the same word as the Low German krabben, to scrape, scratch. In English this was originally a hawking term. The Sportsman's Diary of 1785 tells us that hawks are prone to crab when they stand too close to one another. Turberville's Faulconrie of 1575 also had the word: "Some falcons will crabbe with every hawke and flee of purpose to crabbe with them." It comes with their kind, no doubt.