The alt.usage.english FAQ   

• "by hook or by crook"

  (Phrase Origins)
  
  

  
     This phrase formerly meant "by fair means or foul", although now
  it often (especially in the U.K.) means simply "by whatever
  necessary means".  The first recorded use is by John Wycliffe in
  _Controversial Tracts_ (circa 1380).  Theories include:  a law or
  custom in mediaeval England that allowed peasants to take as
  firewood from the King's forests any deadwood that they could reach
  with a shepherd's crook and cut off with a reaper's billhook;
  rhyming words for "direct" (reachable with a long hook) and
  "indirect" (roundabout); beginners' writing exercises, where letters
  have hooks and brackets are "crooks"; and from "Hook" and "Crook",
  the names of headlands on either side of a bay north of Waterford,
  Ireland, referring to a captain's determination to make the haven of
  the bay in bad weather using one headland or the other as a guide.

  
  
  Source: [Mark Israel, 'Phrase Origins: "by hook or by crook"', The alt.usage.english FAQ file,(line 4953), (29 Sept 1997)]
  
  
  
  

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