The blue bonnet remained everyday wear for Lowland farmers until the end of the 18th century, but its use was gradually discontinued under the influence of fashion and increasingly industrialised clothing manufacture. The association was reinforced by later nostalgic Jacobite songs, such as " Blue bonnets over the border", set down (and possibly written) by Sir Walter Scott, who himself affected to wear a bonnet in later life, dressing very much like "an old Border baron", according to James Hogg. Its political symbolism became overt: one night in December 1748, over two years after the failure of the 1745 Jacobite rising, someone scaled the Edinburgh Parliament House and dressed the lion in the Scottish royal arms in a white wig, blue bonnet, and large white cockade. Despite its earlier association with the Covenanters, adorned with a white cockade the blue bonnet was also adopted as an emblem of Jacobitism. Tartan would occupy this role in the following century. The blue bonnet as a sign of Jacobite allegiance, here worn by Lord George Murray.ĭuring the 18th century the bonnet was, to outsiders, the most readily identifiable Scottish piece of clothing in the popular imagination. It was the bonnet's blue colour, as well as, perhaps, its Lowland and peasant origins, that influenced its adoption as a badge of the Covenanters, who used blue to distinguish themselves from their Royalist opponents and their red cockades and ribbons. By 1700 Martin Martin described Highlanders as mainly wearing thick woollen bonnets of blue or grey. ![]() Dyed with blue or grey vegetable dyes, they became popular with the peasantry and by the end of the 16th century-as noted by Fynes Moryson-the bonnet had been adopted nearly universally by men throughout the Lowlands, although it did not become widely worn in the Highlands until the following century. Bonnetmakers produced broad, flat knitted caps in imitation of the velvet caps popular amongst the upper classes of the time. Ī print of the 1650s, satirising Covenanter manipulation of the young Charles II, shows 'Jockie', a stereotypical Presbyterian Lowland Scot, wearing a broad blue bonnet.Ī substantial hand knitting industry is believed to have developed in Scotland by the late 15th century. The typical Lowland man's bonnet was large and worn flat, overhanging at the front and back and sometimes ornamented with a small tuft or red worsted "cherry", while in the Highlands the fashion was for a smaller, plain bonnet, sometimes peaked at the front. Strings were often sewn around the inner edge, allowing a close fit around the brow, whilst the top was worn pulled into a broad circle. The characteristic blue bonnet was knitted in one piece from a thick wool, dyed with woad, and felted to produce a water resistant finish. In later years it came to be associated with Highland dress, and in the 19th century gave rise to other types of largely military headgear such as the more elaborate Balmoral bonnet, the tam o' shanter, and (with the addition of a wire cage) the military feather bonnet. Although a particularly broad and flat form was associated with the Scottish Lowlands, where it was sometimes called the "scone cap", the bonnet was also worn in parts of Northern England and became widely adopted in the Highlands. The blue bonnet was a type of soft woollen hat that for several hundred years was the customary working wear of Scottish labourers and farmers. Two Lowland shepherds of the 18th century, wearing variations on the blue bonnet.
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