Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to flatter, to talk nonsense; thus blarneyed adj.; blarneying n. and adj.

1817		M. Edgeworth Love and Law I ii: Blarney her cliverly, and work her to a foam against the M‘Brides.
1827		‘The Black Fogle’ in Egan Anecdotes of the Turf, the Chase etc. 34: Hudson may puff away, / Sampson may blarney gay.
1833		M. Scott Tom Cringle’s Log (1862) 203: Where is the end of this yarn, that you are blarneying about?
c.1838		G.W.M. Reynolds ‘The House Breaker’s Song’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 123: For I’m snigger’d if we will be trepanned / By the blarneying jaw of a knowing hand.
1841		‘The Poor’ Seedy Swell Dublin Comic Songster 36: To blarney her he a long time did try.
1863		C. Reade Hard Cash I 320: Do you think you can blarney me, you young monkey?
1864		Derby Day 51: I know he’s a blarneying Irishman.
1873		W.H. Thomes Bushrangers 220: Don’t come blarnyin’ round me, or ye’ll feel me fut in a place ye won’t like.
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) X 2074: Having generally found them [i.e. Irish whores] the lowest, baudiest, foulest-tongued, blarneying, lying, cheating [...] of all the harlots I ever had.
1899		B. Tarkington Gentleman from Indiana 98: I am a bold girl to be blarneying with a young gentleman I met no longer than last night.
1900–01		H. Lawson ‘A Bush Publican’s Lament’ in Roderick (1972) 467: Ole King Billy [...] squats on the verander, an’ blarneys an’ wheedles and whines and argues like a hundred Jews an’ ole Irishwomen put tergether.
1908		‘O. Henry’ ‘A Philistine in Bohemia’ in Voice of the City (1915) 213: He’s the same thricks of spakin’ and blarneyin’ wid his hands.
1910		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Her Husband’s Name’ Sporting Times 22 Jan. 1/3: If I’d not found out ’e was spliced, p’raps I should / ’Ave been bluffed by ’is blarneyin’ skill.
1923		W. Holtby Anderby Wold (1981) 156: An interfering stranger like yourself to be blarneying us into thinking we could be better off than we are.
1925		L. Doyle Dear Ducks 264: He thinks because he talked round Miss Livingstone he can blarney the whole female sex.
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 65: She swallowed, and staring at the bottles muttered, ‘Don’t try to blarney me ——’.
1941		E. Knight Lassie Come-Home 222: Ye’re both saying that to blarney me.
1953		B. Appel ‘Dock Walloper’ in Pronzini & Adrian Hard-Boiled (1995) 235: A blarneying dock walloper by the name of Paddy Lynch.
1955		P. Larkin ‘Toads’ in Rosenthal New Modern Poetry (1967) 130: Something [...] will never allow me to blarney / My way to getting / The fame and the girl and the money / All at one sitting.
1960		L. Davidson Night of Wenceslas 95: I had blarneyed my way past Svoboda [...] and had smuggled [the secrets] out.

2. (US Und.) to pick locks.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.