Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. Irish) a rip-roaring party.

1877		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (4th edn) 302: Huly, a noise, uproar. ‘To raise huly.’ New England.
1925		S. O’Casey Shadow of a Gunman Act I: There’s nothin’ I’m more fond of than a Hooley. I was at one last Sunday – I danced rings round me!
1939		‘Flann O’Brien’ At Swim-Two-Birds 63: Did you ever go into a room early in the morning [...] where there had been a hooley the night before, with cigars and whisky and food and crackers and women’s scent?
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 99: Thomas Leaf [...] asks to be let into the hooley.
1969		P. Boyle All Looks Yellow to the Jaundiced Eye 112: The orange frock [...] It was really the ultimate in squalor. The sort of thing you would see at a village hooley.
1970		C. Brown Down All the Days 53: Two young men [...] who were coming home in the early hours of the morning from an all-night hooley.
1982		E. Mac Thomáis Janey Mack, Me Shirt is Black 44: The lovable Dining Hall for hops, hooleys and fancy dress parties.
1994		(con. 1930s) K.C. Kearns Dublin Tenement Life 180: And it ended up with a hooley. And I always remember what a lovely hooley it was.
1998		K. Sampson Awaydays 91: A taffeta gown doesn’t seem quite the thing for the Civil Service hoolie.
2001		K. Sampson Outlaws (ms.) 32: They’re going into town for their big Christmas hoolie.