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This morning a chef suggested that the expression "by hook or by crook" had been derived from the places in Ireland.My mother always told me that it was a shepherds term.
If you Google it the answers are very ambiguous .Does anybody have the real answer?

Something dating back to the thirteen hundreds is unlikely to have a single derivative, each stands on it's own merits, language is organic and wonderful I feel.

Only the first of the above suggestions stands up to scrutiny by virtue of the age of the phrase. The earliest references to hooks and crooks in this context date back to the 14th century - the first known being from John Gower's Confessio Amantis, 1390:

What with hepe [hook] and what with croke [crook] they [by false Witness and Perjury] make her maister ofte winne.

Gower didn't use the modern 'by hook or by crook' version of the phrase, but it is clear that he was using the reference to hooks and crooks in the same sense that we do now.

I thought that the expression meant ,by any means possible,which does not really explain that?I am subservient to your suggestion because I know no better.

other variations too

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/by-hook-or-by-crook.html

I don't think that we will ever get a real answer then.The expression is well known but it's origin is lost in antiquity.

Agree.