Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Larrikin

Larrikin , noun

[Compare English dial. larrikin a mischievous or frolicsome youth, larrick lively, careless, larack to frolic, to romp.]

A rowdy street loafer; a rowdyish or noisy ill-bred fellow; a hoodlum; -- variously applied, as to a street blackguard, a street Arab, a youth given to horse-play, etc.
Rowdy; rough; disorderly. [Australia & English]
Mobs of unruly larrikins. — Sydney Daily Telegraph

Larrikin is often popularly explained by the following anecdote (which is without foundation): An Irish policeman at Melbourne, on bringing a notorious rough into court, was asked by the magistrate what the prisoner had been doing, and replied, “He was a-larrikin' [that is, a-larking] about the streets.”