I posted this earlier today in The Vocabulary Forum, which I now see is probably the wrong place:

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The Vocabulary Forum
Interesting words, individually or on a theme, from your administrators. To feed out these offerings at an even pace rather than all-at-once, this forum is set up so that only administrators can start threads.

Declan Hughes uses this word at least 5 times in his latest novel (which I don't recommend), set in today's Dublin.

In context, I thought it was a variant spelling of oul', though it could have meant down-trodden, or stupid.

Is it commonly understood across the pond?

Across which pond? I have no idea what either 'oul or oul' are.

From the examples I found Googling it looks like an attempt at a spelling for a regional pronunciation of "old" and as such is possibly peculiar to this writer.

The pond is a quaint, and I gather becoming rare, way to refer to the Atlantic Ocean.

My first guess, from context, was that it was intended to be oul', which I have seen as before as meaning old.

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Tommy grimaced, looked over his shoulder at the last of the 'oul ones straggling out of the church...

Later on, he uses it twice in the same sentence.

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... there were 'oul ones with walking frames and tartan shopping trollies getting the last of the Christmas messages, and 'oul fellas with papers rolled right beneath their arms...

Again, that could mean old. But old didn't fit in a couple of other places.

The usual way for writers to attempt to show a Dublin/Irish pronunciation of "old" is ould, although I have also seen oul', as you suggest, Valentine. Another variant is owd.

My guess is that it's a mistake for oul'. I nearly wrote "typo" rather than "mistake", but you say the word is repeated.

I think you are right, though the book is otherwise well edited. Or at least I think it is. It is full of slang words and phrases that I had to assume were correct.

I'm used to seeing an apostrophe as an indication that one or more letters is missing. I can't remember seeing it at the beginning of a word, though. Can you think of examples? Is there a convention for alphabetising them?

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I'm used to seeing an apostrophe as an indication that one or more letters is missing. I can't remember seeing it at the beginning of a word, though. Can you think of examples? Is there a convention for alphabetising them?

'bus, 'phone...

Ah, good examples. There are probably more like that.

Though, at least in the US, those forms are almost never seen in recent writing.

'tis not too common 'ereabout

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Though, at least in the US, those forms are almost never seen in recent writing.

It seems to me that it is the tendency for such abbreviations to lose their apostrophes and become words in their own right.