Figure 1.--Here we see children iun an unidentified English village, we think during the 1890s. The girls are wearing pinafores and nannty knitted tams. The boys wear peaked caps. Notice the mother with apron in the background wears a peaked cap. We have not seen that before. Most of the children wear black long stockings. Click on the image for a closer look.

A tam as best we can tell is a type of beret, but generall done as fuller bodied than a standard beret. My mother in America, a teen ager called her standard beret a tam. The term 'tam' comes from tam o' shanter, a name given to the traditional Scottish bonnet worn by men. The name derives from Tam o' Shanter, the eponymous hero of the 1790 Robert Burns poem. But the tam existed long before the name. The original name was 'blue bonnet' (16th century) derived from the typical color used by bonnet-makers in Scotland. Reports suggest that these bionnets were the normal fashion of men and servants (late-16th/17th centuries). The Scottish bonnet was similar to the berets worn in northwestern Europe at the time. The later tam o' shanter is distinguished by the woollen 'ball' or 'toorie' decorating the center of the crown. Tam o' shanter came into common usage in the early-19th century. It is related to the Balmoral cap which was sometimes called a tan o' shanter. Some were done in felt, but unlike the continental beret they were often knitted. We are not sure when the tam crossed the border south to England. We suspect it was the mid-19th century as things Scottish became popular in England. Here Queen Victoria played a role. We see them being commonly worn by girls in England (late-19th centurty). The village scene here is a good example (figure 1). We also see younger boys wearing them, including tounger school-age noys, although not necesaeily tio chool. A good example is an Eastbourne boy. For several centuries they were done in blue and other easily available natural dyes. Woad or indigo (which explains the term 'blue bonnet') were the major colors. This began to change as chemists developed inexpensive synthetic dyes. They were done in other fabrics like serge. But the knitted tam seems tob have been the most popular because they ciuld be done at home. In England they were most commonly called a 'tammy' or 'tam'.

>br> Created: 7:30 PM 4/25/2018
Last updated: 7:30 AM 2/16/2024