Buckle Up?

[deckardcanine]

The common depiction of Mayflower pilgrims
Has buckles on hats for the men
And bonnets for women, plus black and white clothing,
But these weren’t so common back then.

The black was a difficult dye in those days,
So they wore it for fancy events,
Including their portraits. Unless they were rich,
Wearing black every day made no sense.

And most of the settlers didn’t have much,
So they dressed in a number of hues.
In fact, they used laces to hold up their pants,
Not those buckles we thought they would use.

They did wear the capotains (conical hats),
But the buckles would not be in fashion
For decades to come, and the Puritans still
Deemed them lavish, preferring to ration.

(In case you were wondering, buckles on hats
Served as more than a symbol of wealth:
They tightened the hats to fit heads of all sizes,
Akin to their function on belts.)