The Definition and History of ‘Donnybrook’

DONNYBROOK

A scene of uproar and disorder; a heated argument.

…in Ireland, in what was once a village on the high road out of Dublin but which is now one of that city’s suburbs. King John gave a licence in 1204 to hold an annual fair in Donnybrook.

By the eighteenth century it had become a vast assembly, held on August 26 and the following 15 days each year, a gathering-place for horse dealers, fortune-tellers, beggars, wrestlers, dancers, fiddlers, and the sellers of every kind of food and drink. It was renowned in Ireland and beyond for its rowdiness and noise, and particularly for the whiskey-fuelled fighting that went on after dark. A passing reference in, of all sober works, Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution of 1867, gives a flavour: “The only principle recognised … was akin to that recommended to the traditionary Irishman on his visit to Donnybrook Fair, ‘Wherever you see a head, hit it’.” The usual weapon was a stick of oak or blackthorn that Irishmen often called a shillelagh (a word which derives from the town of that name in County Wicklow). The legend was that visitors to Donnybrook fair would rather fight than eat.

… its name started to be used to describe a brawl, at first in the form like Donnybrook fair but then elliptically.

 This text was taken from an entry at World Wide Words