"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 01/09/17 (by hook or by crook)

THia is a story that I have told before, but it's one of the questions that I get asked most regularly by our lovely viewers, and that is where does "by hook or by crook" come from? And a part of the reason I love it is that it's invited so many different, colourful stories as to its true history. The first one relates to the villages of Hook Head and nearby Crook, which are in Warerford in Ireland. And Cromwell is supposed to have said that by landing his army at one of those two places during a siege, which is in around 1649, 1650, Woterford was fall by Hook or by Crook, which is a colourful one and entirely plausible when you look at it. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't fit. Anothet point to an English judge who served under Charles I, and Charles I tried to impose quite a hefty ship of money tax as it was called, without a consent of Parlament, which is obviously unconstitutional but he did it anyway. And the judge is said to have refused to pass this, refused to actually enshrine it in law and so it was said that the ship money tax would get through by hook, in other words by force, but hot by crook,not by the judge. The truth, or as closest we can get to it, lies elsewhere and that's that around the time the saying appears, villagers were granted permission by Royal Charter to collect firewood. Obviously incredibly important for fuel and for warmth, and they could either gather it from local forests, provided it lay on the ground or could be taken from the dead wood that was hanging from branches. And reaching such branches? of course, needed the appropriate tools, so the villagers were allowed to gather their fuel by hook, in other words by shepherd's hook, or by crook.