Whether you're having a pint on vacation in Ireland, where it's the best-selling drink, or knocking back a longneck here at home in the States, there's nothing quite like a Guinness. ( .) Every part of it is iconic: the deep, dark color, the robust foamy head, and of course, that great golden harp that adorns its labels and pint glasses.
Why a harp? Well, that's no mystery: it's a well-known heraldic symbol of Ireland that Guinness adopted for its own purposes. As Guinness was growing in the latter half of the 19th century, its makers saw the importance of a recognizable brand — and more specifically, a recognizably Irish brand. So when Guinness started to sell bottles of its famous stout in 1862, they put a golden harp on the label.
It's far from the harp's only use as a symbol. In addition to long being a part of Ireland's coat of arms, Ryanair, the Irish low-budget airline, also uses a harp, as does the Government of Ireland — although when that was established in 1922, they had to avoid using the same design as Guinness' trademark. (The "straight edge" of the Guinness harp is on the left; the Irish government's harp is the reverse.
) The Guinness harp is modeled after the Trinity College Harp The Guinness harp — in fact, just about every Irish heraldic harp, up to and including the one on the coat of arms — is modeled after the Trinity College Harp, one of the oldest surviving medieval Gaelic harps. It is often called "Brian Boru's Harp," as it was once said to hav.