Gentlemen:

What a fascinating article! Now I have even MORE kilt history and information with which to bore my wife to tears!

I do have a question regarding the color photograph of the saffron school kilt: Has anyone here seen the kilt in this photo personally? As has already been pointed out, the photo shows the pleats running in the opposite direction than what is typically seen on a knife-pleated kilt. I've printed plenty of photographs, both in a darkroom and digitally, that have been flipped horizontally, either intentionally or by accident. I couldn't see anything in this photograph that would allow me to say that the photo is definitely oriented one way or the other, though admittedly the details aren't terribly large on my computer screen.

On the subject of the caubeen, I have this to say, for what it is worth: I'm a fan of hats. My typical daily headwear is a type of Belgian beret in black wool which, when worn with the soft band turned out instead of in bears a marked resemblance to the photos of caubeens I've seen. My understanding of "caubeen" as a word is that it originally (and broadly) meant "little hat", and could have been used to refer to any number of small styles, brimmed or otherwise. It's been pointed out that the Scottish bonnet and the Irish caubeen are very similar to one another and also to other soft, "beret"-styles worn in Europe over the past few hundred years. I'm not learned enough to make any strong statements one way or the other, but are we looking at a case of fashion migration (and hold-over?), or concurrent evolution? Not that it matters to me, really; I like the style regardless of origins. But I'm the sort of person who likes Knowing Things and this sort of question gets my curiosity going (much to my wife's annoyance).

~Ken