Quote Originally Posted by BobsYourUncle View Post
To add to the confusion, I am not sure that Old Hippie's attempt at taxonomy holds any water, with all due respect to Old Hippie, who is a gentleman and a scholar. I've seen many non military tams that have a band below the disk, including at least one of the offerings on the Scottish Tartans Museum web shop...now everyone can start throwing things at me...
Well, I've been accused of many things, but infallibility is not one of them.

To add to the confusion, I was just reading that a tam-o-shanter has a narrow band, while a Balmoral has a wider one. Everyone seems to agree on a beret.

In my collection of berets and other headgear I have a "Rasta Tam" that I've been known to wear on the odd occasion over the years. It's knit in concentric rainbow rings and is more like a beret. I have two military berets and an Abercrombie & Fitch tam-o-shanter in the old style -- knit in a tartan pattern with a toorie the size of a duck egg. And of course a couple of Glengarries now.

Out on the Prairies we wore "Scotch Caps" which are billed hats with earflaps, in either black and green, black and blue or black and red squares. Called so, I supppose, because they have a toorie or because they're patterned in what people call "plaid."