It IS a very good word, and very descriptive. Donnybrook is an actual place, a district in Dublin, Ireland. There was originally a Donnybrook Fair, an annual Irish event known for its brawls, drunken disorder and fracas of all types. Hence, the very appropriate term. More history:
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.
There is a 1961 musical called "Donnybrook!", based on The Quiet Man which stars John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. I watch this movie every St. Patrick's Day. It is about an American boxer who kills an opponent by mistake and moves to Ireland to get back to himself. It is a very spirited love story.
Some quotes for you:
But this was the beginning of Tommy's years of fighting back, a period that ended in a donnybrook conducted all over the O'Connor house.
-- Tracy Kidder, Home Town
Wine and talk flow freely, so much so that the meal ends with a Rooney family donnybrook over, typically enough, religion and politics.
-- Howard Frank Mosher, "24 Hours in Due East, S.C.", New York Times, April 7, 1991
Thanks, Keith!
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