Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[Matthew Amt]

Tenth century Welsh havey horsemen were armed with swords and javelins, and protected by mail a medium-sized shield, and a helmet. Sounds similar to what we've been theorizing about. Is this a throwback to the fifth century?

Not necessarily. It's just a good working combination. You see the same sort of thing on some 19th century Afghan tribesmen, after all. (And it's pretty much what I theorized for Post-Roman cavalry about 40 pages back!)

Aparrently the favoured tunic colour of the welsh cavalry was red, does that mean anything?

Probably just a fashion. I've heard about the red tunics before, too. In Scotland or Ireland you get yellow tunics instead. Just a local custom, and it's not necessarily universal or some sort of law. Compare modern jeans--blue, right? Yet you *can* find them in black, tan, brown, purple, green, etc. We just think of them as "blue jeans", and blue is clearly the most common color, simply by custom.

Matthew