Lifestyle
Top o the morning meaning: Behind an Irish good morning
Its St Patricks Day! Do Irish people really say top o the mornin to ya, like they do in the movies? Or is it just an imitation? Lets take a look at the meaning of the phrase, top o the morning, the correct response, and its popularity as an Irish good morning.
Top o the morning meaning
What do people mean when they say top o the morning? Most people understand that it boils down to a flowery way of saying good morning.
However, not everyone knows that it is part of a longer phrase: Top of the morning to yourself.
Not only that, but the supposedly correct way to respond to it is by saying, And the rest of the day to yourself.
When one person greets another by saying it, they mean to bid to the other the best part of the morning.
Therefore, by responding with the rest of the day to you, the second speaker figuratively accepts, and returns, the good fortune wished upon them by the first.
Has it got anything to do with milk?
A sermon on vanity delivered by Anglican bishop Ezekiel Hopkins in the 17th century likens the human soul to the cream of creation.
The soul, next to angels, isthe very top and creamof the whole creation.
This might also have something to do with the phrases, cream of the crop and creme de la creme.
Therefore its possible that top o the morning has a connection to fresh, unhomogenised milk, where the thick creamy top rises to the surface.
In this analogy, the cream that rises to the top represents the best of the morning.
Do Irish people say top of the morning in 2021?
According to Irish historian P W Joyce, who wrote most of his works in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the expression was once a common salutation in Ireland.
While the phrase persists as an emblem of Irishness in the 21st century, it is likely that this is a result of American filmmakers re-popularising it in the 20th century.
The Disney film Darby OGill and the Little People apparently uses the colloquialism.
Similarly, the usage of Bing Crosbys music in the film Top o the Morning [1949] may well have popularised the salutation to American and other anglophone audiences.
However, it dropped out of popular usage in Ireland a long time ago. Nevertheless, it persists, along with leprechauns and clovers, as an unshakable representative of Irishness for non-Irish people.
In support of this, Irish Central described Top of the morning to you as a Hollywood invention, never used in Ireland.
The phrase is therefore apocryphal or, of doubtful authenticity.
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