Tam o'shanter — the traditional Scottish bonnet

The tam o'shanter is the classic Scottish men's bonnet, taking its name from the title hero of Robert Burns's 1790 narrative poem Tam o' Shanter. (Tam wears the bonnet in the poem's illustrations rather than in the text itself, but the name stuck.)

Description: the bonnet is a flat woollen cap, originally hand-knitted in one piece, then stretched on a wooden disc and fulled (felted) to its characteristic shape. The earliest of these caps — known as blue bonnets after their usual colour — were made by Scotland's own bonnet-makers. By 1599 five bonnet-maker guilds operated across Scotland in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Perth, Stirling and Glasgow. Throughout the late 16th century and the whole of the 17th the bonnet was the everyday Scottish men's headwear.

Today the tam o'shanter is part of formal Highland dress and is worn with a kilt at weddings, ceilidhs and Scottish events. The toorie (the pompom on top) and the cap-band can be specified in clan colours. ScottEst makes its own tam o'shanters in Estonian National Tartan; see them in the shop.