Caubeen

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A Caubeen as worn by the Royal Irish Regiment and pipers of the Irish Guards

A caubeen is an Irish soldier's headdress, a variation on the beret or Tam o'Shanter. It is very high on the off-side (usually the left), which makes it resemble a tilted rimless Balmoral bonnet. It has narrow black tapes in its edge to secure it that are worn tied neatly in the back; the Canadian version is made with wide tapes.

The military version is traditionally rifle green in color. It is typically worn with a unit insignia (sometimes worn with a short colored plume called a hackle indicating regimental association) pinned on the off side of the cap.

It is the official headdress of the Irish Army^{[citation needed]} and is also worn by pipers of the Irish Guards, the Royal Irish Regiment and the Queen's University Officers Training Corps of the British Army.

[edit] Irish Army Use

The first depiction of its wear is in a painting of Owen Roe O'Neill, chief of the O'Neills of Ulster. He was the leader of the Irish Confederate forces during the "Wars of the Three Kingdoms" period from his return from exile on the Continent in 1642 to his death in 1649.

[edit] British Army Use

The British Army's Northern Irish regimental bands first adopted the caubeen worn with saffron kilts as a distinction for their pipers in 1922. The caps were differenced by hackles: The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers wore their traditional gray hackles, the Royal Irish Fusiliers wore their traditional green hackles, the Irish Guards and London Irish Rifles wore granted blue hackles, while the Liverpool Irish wore a blue and red hackle. The Royal Ulster Rifles didn't get a band until 1948, so they didn't receive their black hackles until 1947.

In 1937 the London Irish Rifles extended the caubeen's wear to the entire regiment. They were the only soldiers to wear the caubeen throughout World War II until 1944.

It wasn't until the campaign in Italy, when the 2nd battalion of the London Irish served in the Irish Brigade, that its wear really began to catch on. The 2nd battalion of the Inniskilling Regiment started wearing caubeens made from Italian soldiers' greatcoats in January of 1944 and the 6th battalion of their regiment soon copied them.

In February of 1944, fortuitously, the British Army made the 'General Service' cap (a sort of Tam o'shanter in drab cloth) the new standard undress cap. The caubeen passed muster as the form of the GS cap hadn't been formalized at the time and their retailoring of the stocks of 'GS caps' went largely unnoticed by the ACI's "little tin gods".

In 1947, the wearing of the caubeen was later extended to all of the infantry regiments in the post-war North Irish Brigade, with the Royal Ulster Rifles receiving a black hackle.

The Royal Irish Rangers, an amalgamation of the regiments of the North Irish Brigade that was formed in 1968, were granted the wearing of the caubeen with the Irish Fusiliers' green hackle. It continues to be worn by the Royal Irish Regiment, created by the amalgamation of the Royal Irish Rangers and the Ulster Defence Regiment in 1992.