The blue beret was a type of soft woollen hat that served as the usual working clothing for Scottish workers and farmers for several hundred years. Although a particularly broad and flat shape was especially associated with the Scottish Lowlands, where it was sometimes called the scone cap, the bonnet was also worn in parts of Northern England and was generally adopted in the Highlands.
In later years, the bonnet became associated with Highland dress, and in the 19th century this led to other headgear, such as the more elaborate Balmoral bonnet, the tam o' shanter and (with the addition of a metal frame) the military feather bonnet.
It is believed that by the end of the 15th century, a considerable textile industry had emerged in Scotland. Bonnetmakers produced broad, flat knitted caps as imitations of the velvet caps that were popular among the higher classes of that time.
Dyed with blue or gray plant-based dyes, they became popular among the farming population and by the end of the 16th century – as noted by Fynes Moryson – the bonnet had been almost universally adopted by men in the Lowlands, although in the Highlands it wasn't widely worn until a century later. By 1700, Martin Martin described the Highlanders as wearing mainly thick woollen bonnets of blue or gray.
The blue colour of the bonnet likely played an important role in its choice as a recognition sign of the Covenanters. The associations with Lowland and more simple, agricultural origins may also have contributed to this symbolism.
The Covenanters deliberately used blue to distinguish themselves from their royalist opponents, who were instead recognizable by red cockades and ribbons.
During the 18th century, the bonnet was the most recognizable Scottish garment in popular imagination for outsiders. In the following century, tartan would take over this role. Despite its earlier association with the Covenanters, the blue bonnet, adorned with a white cockade, was also adopted as an emblem of Jacobitism.
The political symbolism became overt: on a night in December 1748, more than two years after the failure of the Jacobite uprising of 1745, someone climbed the Edinburgh Parliament House and dressed the lion from the Scottish royal weapon with a white wig, blue bonnet and large white cockade.
The association was strengthened by later nostalgic Jacobite songs, such as Blue Bonnets Over the Border, recorded (and possibly written) by Sir Walter Scott, who himself later wore a bonnet and dressed very much as "an old Border reiver", according to James Hogg.
The blue bonnet remained everyday clothing for Lowland farmers until the end of the 18th century, but its use gradually declined under the influence of fashion and the increasing industrialization of clothing production.
A minister of a Lowland parish in Angus, who noted the increase of imported fabrics and clothing in his lifetime, wrote: "In 1760 there were only two hats in the parish; in 1790 only a few bonnets were worn; the profession of bonnetmaker in the next parish was abandoned."
A dictionary from 1825 described the bonnet as "formerly worn by the more outdated farming population". By the middle of the 19th century, the characteristic broad, flat Lowland bonnet, usually worn with clothing of hand-woven gray and perhaps a woollen, black and white checked maud, was said to have disappeared or only survived in the "debased form of a small round Kilmarnock bonnet, fairly commonly worn by ploughmen, coachmen and boys of the lower ranks".
Through Victorian fascination with (and militarization of) Highland dress, the smaller Kilmarnock or Balmoral bonnet, further adorned with ribbons, a tartan pattern on the edge and a toorie, was incorporated into the British military uniform during the 19th century.
The informal version of the Balmoral, also provided with a toorie, is often known as the Tam o' Shanter, after a poem by Robert Burns in which the main character wears a "gude blue bonnet", although the more modern "tam" can be made from a wide range of materials. Like the English Monmouth cap, the real knitted blue bonnet is still made in small numbers.
In Scotland, the term bonnet-laird, or bannet-laird, was sometimes used to refer to a yeoman, who themselves worked land of which they were the owners.
The name combined the Scottish title laird, the owner of an established estate, with the blue bonnet of the typical Scottish farmer. Walter Scott gave a slightly different definition of the term, stating that it meant "a small owner", or a member of the lower nobility, who "adopted the clothing, along with the customs, of a yeoman".
The characteristic blue bonnet was knitted in one piece from thick wool, dyed with woad and felted to achieve a water-repellent finish. Cords were often sewn around the inner edge, so that the bonnet sat tightly around the forehead, while the top was worn in a broad circle.
The typical Lowland bonnet for men was large and worn flat, overhanging at the front and back and sometimes decorated with a small plume or a red woollen "cherry", while in the Highlands the fashion was a smaller, simple bonnet, sometimes with a point at the front.
Internal links
- The Scottish Targe: The Indestructible Shield of the Highlands
- The Backsword: The Robust Single-Edged Sword
- The Basket-Hilted Sword: The Evolution of the Basket Hilt
- Scottish Dirk: History, Use and Cultural Significance
- Sgian-dubh: History and Tradition of Scottish Knives
