An Abraham man is he that walketh bare armed, and bare legged, and fayneth hymselfe mad, and caryeth a packe of wool, or a stycke with baken on it, or such lyke toy, and nameth himselfe poore Tom.
1608, Thomas Dekker, The Bel-Man of London[2], J. M. Dent & Sons, published 1905, An Abraham-man, pages 98–99:
Of all the mad rascalls (that are of this wing) the Abraham-man is the most phantastick: The fellow (quoth this old Lady of the Lake unto me) that sat halfe naked (at table to day) from the girdle upward, is the best Abraham-man that ever came to my house and the notablest villaine: he sweares he hath bin in bedlam, and will talke frantickly of purpose[…]
"Curse him, Squire," croaked Chinnery, "don't suffer such an Abram cove to play the counterfeit crank. If he were to refuse to booze it at the George in White Friars, the Bear and Harrow in Chancery Lane, the Setting Dog and Partridge in Jackanapes Alley, or any of the loyal houses in London, they would mill him with a filch, or give him a worse Rose-Alley salutation than Johnny Dryden's."
1869, William Hugh Logan, A pedlar's[sic] pack of ballads and songs:
Duds and Cheats thou oft hast won, / […] / Cank and Dommerar thou couldst play, / Or Rum-maunder in one day; / And like an Abram-cove couldst pray, / Yet pass with Jybes well jerk'd away.
1883, Howard Pyle, “Robin Hood Turns Beggar”, in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood[3], page 203:
Said the Beggar: "I marvel not that thou hast taken a liking to my manner of life, good fellow, but 'to like' and 'to do' are two matters of different sorts. I tell thee, friend, one must serve a long apprenticeship ere one can learn to be even so much as a clapper-dudgeon, much less a crank or an Abraham-man. You are probably too old to get the hang of it."
[…]and an "Abraham cove"—that is to say, an animal driven to desperation by cold and hunger.
1902, Herbert Compton, A Free Lance in a Far Land, page 94:
What, you — you bit av a beak and trail. Ecod, but Bess is meat for your master, and that's me, as you'll soon know. She's an old wench o' mine, and I'll buss her when I choose, and ask no leave of an Abram cove of corporal like you afore I run you through the body."
So loathly was he and verminous they scarce could seize and bind him, but when haled before the magistrate he proved to be an abram-cove named Jacques Roulet, who with his brother Jean and a cousin Julien[…]
Funny, but her words made him smile. "Ahh, Mary my love, how I missed your saucy tongue." My love? The beard splitter. The Abraham cove. She wasn't his love. "Burn in hell."
