By hook or by crook
"By whatever means necessary, fair or otherwise."
The leading theory dates to medieval England, where peasants were legally permitted to gather firewood from common land, but only deadwood they could reach and pull down using a billhook (a curved cutting tool) or a shepherd's crook. Anything they could pull down "by hook or by crook" was theirs to keep. It's a tidy story with real supporting evidence from 14th-century manorial records, though a handful of etymologists think it may simply be an old alliterative pairing that got a folk story attached to it later.
Myth vs. FactThe story is plausible and old (the phrase appears in Wycliffe's writing from the 1380s), but no single document proves the firewood custom is definitely where it started rather than just where it was popularised.
Sources: Cited in Wycliffe's Controversial Tracts (c.1380); manorial common-land customs documented in English legal history.
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