A True Childhood: Dylan's peninsularity

David N.Thomas

This paper was published in September 2014 in a book edited by Hannah Ellis:

Dylan Thomas: A Centenary Celebration (Bloomsbury). This extended version includes notes, sources, reading and family trees.

At the centenary of Dylan’s birth, it’s timely to wonder about his childhood and teenage years. After all, he was an early-onset poet. He published his first collection when he’d just turned twenty, with two more before he was twenty-five. Almost two-thirds of these collected poems had first been written in his teens, prompting one scholar to comment that Dylan was a genius who had already matured by the time he was seventeen. So it seems that the more we know about his early years, the better we might understand both the poetry and the man, including his infantilism, which some believe to be at the heart of that genius.[1]

Dylan got off to a good start. His mother, Florence, was attended by Dr Alban Evans, who had already made his mark in Swansea as both a surgeon and a family historian, with a passion for collecting deeds and lineages. His attendance could have cost the Thomases dearly, but Evans was known as a man who ‘in a deserving case…was ever willing to modify his fees.’ And perhaps especially in Dylan’s case because he, like Evans himself, had his roots in the soil of Carmarthenshire. It is, of course, rather fanciful to imagine that, as Florence lay recovering with the baby in her arms, she and the doctor were swapping stories about her Llangain family tree. Could Waunfwlchan, Llwyngwyn and Pencelli-uchaf have been the first sounds that Dylan heard? Perhaps not, but as he went from baby to boy and further, those sounds and then the words would have become ever more familiar, as relatives descended on Cwmdonkin Drive after a day in the shops, filling the house with Welsh and family news. One Llangain visitor remembered that she was ‘always going up there for tea if I was doing a day's shopping in Swansea. We all used to have tea together there.’[2]

Baby delivered, Alban Evans went off a few days later to research the Tyglyn family papers in the Aeron valley in Cardiganshire, where Dylan would later live. It had been a normal birth and mother and baby needed no further assistance, though the father had celebrated so well he needed help taking off his boots. Dylan coughed and cried his way through childhood, brought up by an indulgent and ever-protective mother, as well as a nurse and a doting older sister. A family friend later observed that it was “pretty obvious that Dylan had been brought up very, very, very annwyl, as they say in Wales...he was brought up very dearly and closely…sheltered in many ways.”

And there were lots of places to shelter because he grew up in a very large extended family; it was also a greying family, so that the aunts who looked after him were in their fifties and sixties. Spoiling was the order of the day. A good many of his mother’s sisters and cousins had no children of their own; he was the first boy in his mother’s close family for over sixteen years, and boys were just as rare on his father’s side. All but one of his first cousins were girls, all very much older than him: ‘Everybody mothered Dylan; everybody…’[3]

His mother’s family lived mostly in rural west Wales, so that Dylan had two childhoods, one in Swansea and the other farmed out to various aunts in the countryside. There were several of these farmyard mothers, including his favourite aunt, Annie, and her husband, Jim Jones. They lived at Fernhill, a short ride, for Dylan, by bus or cart from the town of Carmarthen. The farm is often described as remote or isolated, but it was neither; it stood just off the main road to Llansteffan, on the lane that went to the shop-and-pubbed settlements of Llangynog and Llanybri. There were also neighbours at Fernhill, almost a dozen farms within a half-mile, as well as Bethesda Chapel and House, though no Eli Jenkins ever preached here. Many more farms were within easy walking distance, as were the forge, post office and shop in the nearby hamlet of Llangain, together with a church and chapel that were at the centre of cultural life.[4]

Fernhill was but one of a number of family farms that Dylan stayed at or visited. He was part of an extensive family network that itself was closely related to a wider farming community. So who were these other relations? What do we know about Annie and Jim’s farming neighbours, and the shopkeepers, postmen, blacksmiths, carpenters and farm workers who would have been a part of Dylan’s everyday life? Even today, our understanding of this community, and the part it played in the poet’s growing-up, is rudimentary.

It is, of course, disappointing that we’ve reached the centenary knowing so little about Dylan’s rural upbringing; material could have been gathered decades ago, when his farming relations and their neighbours were alive. There are a good half-dozen universities within easy driving of Carmarthenshire, but professors and research students alike stayed away. This lack of academic interest left Dylan’s several biographers in the lurch; they had very little to draw upon in writing about Fernhill, which one of them, FitzGibbon, thought the most important place in Dylan’s childhood.

So a rural outing, suggesting both excursion and discovery, seems an appropriate centenary activity. It’s also as good a way as any to celebrate the birthday of someone who enjoyed walking so much. I shall start at the bridge over the river Tywi/Towy at Carmarthen. It was the river of Dylan’s childhood holidays, and the river of bedtime stories about shipwrecks and drownings, including a cousin, and of the bravery of the lifeboat men, including an uncle, who tried to save them. Not surprisingly, the Tywi appears occasionally in Dylan’s writing. Together with its tributaries and landscape, it fills the second half of the Rev. Eli Jenkins’ morning prayer. It flows quietly through Dylan’s story, A Visit to Grandpa’s and it makes a surprising appearance in his poem Over Sir John’s hill, two works that deal with dying and death.[5]

It’s also the river that connects the two sides of Dylan’s family. His paternal grandmother was born upstream of Carmarthen bridge in Llangadog, as was one of his aunties, whose family had once run a pub in the village. Dylan’s great-grandfather had also been born here and thought the graveyard so comfy that, in A Visit to Grandpa’s, he was determined to be buried there. And, in the end, he got his way, brought from Carmarthen along the Tywi valley to the church, and then tucked in nicely next to the graveyard wall, with plenty of space to twitch, without getting his legs wet in the sea or even the river. [6]

Downstream of the bridge, the Tywi belongs to the other side of Dylan’s family, the Williamses; it was the birth place of his maternal grandmother, as well as his many cousins, uncles and aunts who, he once wrote, were the ‘undeniably mad unpossessed peasantry of the inbred crooked county...’ [7] Perhaps some were mad, and others inbred, but hardly any were peasants or unpossessed. This is the way I shall go, following the river to Llansteffan, passing first through once-rural Johnstown, a no-man’s land, neither upstream nor downstream, where both sides of Dylan’s family had lived. His father, DJ Thomas, had been born and brought up here, as had Dylan’s maternal grandfather, George Williams.

My first stop will be in Llanllwch, at Boksburg Hall, a large, three-storey country house across the lane from the church. Today, it’s the headquarters of the Carmarthenshire Cheese Company but, in Dylan’s time, it was a dairy farm worked by three of his mother’s cousins, John, Jane and Theodosia Francis, formerly of Dolaumeinion farm, Llangain. DJ’s parents and a sister are buried in the churchyard, so a visit to the Hall after tending the grave would have brought the young Dylan a glass of milk and a slice of cheese from the Boksburg dairy.[8]

Afterwards, I shall go to Llangain, where I'll make for Pentrewyman farm, the birth place of Dylan’s uncle, Jim Jones Fernhill. In his nephew’s short story, The Peaches, Jim is portrayed as a reluctant and feckless farmer, a man who sold his piglets in the pub for a pint or two. But was there more to Jim than met the poet’s eye? Could local gossip be right, that he was related to a wealthy banking dynasty? As for those poor piglets, would it help us to know that the publican, a cousin, was also a butcher, with his own abbatoir in Llansteffan? So could it have been at all possible that in real life, whilst Dylan was sitting in the cart outside, Jim was selling the little darlings, not just for a pint, but also to fund his visitor’s summer holiday at Fernhill? And whilst The Peaches is clearly about Fernhill, is the poem Fern Hill about another farm altogether?

A Life of Last Straws

‘Poor Dad, to die of drink and agriculture.’ Rev. Eli Jenkins

I shall set off across Pentrewyman’s fields, thinking of eleven-year old Emily Jones, perhaps a relation, who had come from a neighbouring farm to help clear stones. Jim, just eight years old, was probably one of those working alongside her when she was attacked by a bull. Thrown twenty feet in the air, she fractured a thigh bone, with injuries as well to her stomach and bowel. A surgeon was rushed from Carmarthen and, in due course, she recovered. Was it at this early age that Jim realised that farming was both hard work and dangerous?[9]

Two years later, in 1874, there was another emergency at Pentrewyman. Jim’s mother, Rachel, died while giving birth, attended by the elderly widow of a local carpenter. There was no doctor present, and none was rushed from Carmarthen. The baby survived and was named Rachel. Her brother, Jim, was now ten years old and the eldest child. He had lost not only his mother but both his grandmothers as well in quick succession, but there was precious little time to feel sorry for himself. There were over a hundred acres to farm, and four younger children to feed, including baby Rachel, with only two servants to help – in his mother’s day there were four. Jim started work on the farm in earnest. His father re-married; soon there were three more children, and within a few years there were eleven, most of them under twelve. As Jim toiled away, further accidents happened. In 1890, within the space of a few months, one neighbour was killed by a bull, and another by lightning while ploughing. His horses died, too.[10]

By the time of his marriage to Dylan’s auntie Annie in 1893, Jim had probably had his fill of farming. The last straw could well have been the death, in an accident on a farm, of his younger brother, an agricultural labourer, hit by a falling boulder. Crushed and bleeding internally, it took him nine hours to die. Jim lived to a ripe old age but could this have been the moment when, like the Rev Eli Jenkins’ father, he lost all ambition and died, in spirit, of too much agriculture?

In fact, there was one more blow to come; when Jim’s father died in 1906, he left a net estate of over £40,000, in today’s terms, but he left nothing at all to his eldest son, not even the smallest token of gratitude for all those years that Jim had worked to keep Pentrewyman going. Describing him as "one of the most successful farmers in the countryside", as well as "highly respected in the neighbourhood", the obituary for his father in a local paper would have rubbed salt in the wound. His father had always enjoyed a good press, both for his achievements at local shows (“a high reputation as a breeder of black cattle”) and his unstinting work as treasurer of the local friendly society (“the money could not be in safer hands”).

By now, Jim and Annie were at Pentowyn on the Tâf estuary, farming well over a hundred acres. He seems to have started off with good intentions: by 1904, he was on the parish council and in the following year he was admitted to the county chamber of agriculture.

But within little more than a year of his father’s death, Jim was preparing to leave the farm. He sold off his cattle, sheep and pigs, together with eight horses, their harnesses, collars, bridles and ploughs, as well as his dairy utensils and all his other farming machinery and implements, including mowing machines, reapers and binders, hay makers, hay rakes, threshing and winnowing machines. Jim’s heydays were well and truly over, a descent ingloriously marked by an appearance before the magistrates on a charge of allowing seven carcasses to remain unburied; the local constable reported that, just a week after the sale, he had found the bodies of six sheep and one bullock in a “very decomposed state.” [11]

There’s room for a good deal of speculation about how Jim was affected by his mother Rachel’s death. It seems possible, for example, that one legacy was resentment, a grievance about opportunities denied, an ‘if only’ worm that could have troubled Jim throughout his life. About the time of her death, Rachel’s father left Clomendy, the farm on the estuary that had been in the family for more than a hundred years. Now in his late sixties, he retired to Llansteffan with his three unmarried daughters, Rachel’s younger sisters. As Jim grew older, and heard more of his family history, did he wonder about how matters might have turned out rather differently?

if only there’d been a doctor present

if only his mother hadn’t died

if only she and his father had taken over Clomendy

then he, as the eldest son, might well have followed on at the farm. And what a prize Clomendy would have been, just short of two hundred acres, ‘a very respectable farmhouse’ of eleven rooms and ‘from situation one of the most desirable in the county’, which included a junior farm bringing in rental income. Clomendy was also close to Penhen, an even larger farm run by his grandmother’s family who, the stories went, were on hunting terms with Coomb mansion. Jim would have been well and truly set up to farm as a gentleman.[12] If only…

From Pentrewyman, I shall make my way along the coastal path to Llansteffan. The journey there for a drink was one that Dylan frequently made, usually on the bus, sometimes by bike and often on foot, watching the ‘moon ploughing up the Towy’ as he walked to the pub. I shall make for the castle, pausing at the graveyard where chesty Grandpa, who later died of bronchitis, was determined not to be buried. From the castle, I shall look west towards Pentowyn and Mwche, and the other family farms such as Down and Laques-newydd. In Dylan’s day, the town below was also bursting with relations; some had retired here from their farms, while others ran shops and kept the Williams family pub, the Edwinsford. The castle will also give me a fine view across the tearing estuary towards Ferryside, where some of Florence’s other relatives had settled. Both Llansteffan and Ferryside have been modest about their associations with Dylan but, in truth, they have a good deal to shout about. [13]

So has Llanybri, and that’s where I’ll go next, walking the narrow lanes to the Farmers’ Arms. It was one of Dylan’s favourite pubs and the landlady, Sarah Ann Evans, thought the world of him: "He was a real farmer in his way." He was also a proper gentleman, she said, though she was taken aback that he and Caitlin would picnic in the pub sitting on the floor:

Cloth on the floor, and eat their bread and cheese and I think they had an onion with them once here![14]

I’m too old for the floor, so it will be a table by the window, with a brown ale and a bowl of Llanybri cawl, brimming with lamb from the salt marsh below. I shall first raise a glass to Colin Edwards, Dylan’s first biographer who, in the 1960s, came from California, lugging his reel-to-reel tape-recorder around these lanes to talk to Dylan’s family and friends. Some of Edwards’ own roots were here, too; his father’s family had farmed Pentrewyn, just outside Llanybri, before moving to Disgwylfa farm in Llansteffan. Then I shall sit back and think about other conversations between Dylan and Sarah Ann, such as those about his family:

He talked about his mother, very often about his mother…Oh, he would be saying ‘I wouldn’t be where I am now only because of mother.'

This would undoubtedly be the moment to consider yet another 2014 celebration. On November 7, it will be the two-hundreth anniversary of the marriage of Dylan’s maternal great-great grandparents, John and Hannah Williams. They farmed Pen-y-coed, just outside Llanybri, and were followed there by their children and grandchildren. But I shall also raise a glass to Dylan’s other set of great-great grandparents, Evan and Anne Harries, who farmed Plas Isaf, just behind the Farmers’ Arms. The family were there until 1906, when their son-in-law, Thomas Phillips, dropped dead in the pub.[15]

And now, as on many walks, we are at risk of getting lost – this time in a thicket of family trees. Thomas was Florence’s great-uncle by marriage, and the blood great-uncle of Vera Phillips, Dylan’s childhood friend from Swansea. Her husband, William Killick, was tried for attempting to murder Dylan and acquitted. The incident was fictionalised in a 2008 film, The Edge of Love. Hollywood’s roots, and suckers, are found in the most surprising of places.

So it seems right that I should next take the short walk across the fields from Llanybri to Tirbach, derelict now, but once a thriving farm. I shall think about Dylan and Vera whose grandfather, William Phillips, had farmed here after he had married into the Lloyd side of Florence’s family. I shall also think about Florence's sister, Theodosia, who had taken this same walk with her husband, the Rev David Rees. They had married in Capel Newydd in 1897, and had led their guests across the fields to Tirbach where the wedding breakfast was held.

Jim and Annie Jones had also started married life in Tirbach, though Annie had first come here as housekeeper to one of her uncles, John Williams, the eldest son of Waunfwlchan, who made a name for himself as a breeder of “fine carriage horses and hunters”. He moved out after her marriage to Jim but came back years later to live with them at Fernhill and died there, as had his brother, Daniel, a few years earlier. Both were nursed to the end by Annie; Daniel died penniless, but Annie was the sole beneficiary of John’s Will and was left more than enough to keep the farm afloat for many years. But after paying off his debts, she ended up with very little, and Fernhill slipped slowly downhill thereafter. For Jim, this could have been yet another reason to feel sorry for himself, let down first by his own family and then by the Williamses as well, including Daniel whose guiding principle in life had always been, as he himself put it, ‘Do justice, love mercy, be upright and straight, and never push a poor man down the hill.’[16]

Land of his aunties

They were the background from which he had sprung, and he needed that background all his life, like a tree needs roots. Caitlin Thomas

Tirbach would not be a place to linger, with loose dogs about that guard the tilting house. So I shall turn away towards the farm next door, and take myself to Maesgwyn, once farmed by Dylan’s great-great-great grandparents, and it’s been in the family ever since. Today, Maesgwyn and adjoining Llwyngwyn are farmed by Dylan’s cousin, Heulwen Morris. Here there will be tea and Welsh cakes for another, double celebration. In 2014, we celebrate Heulwen’s 80th birthday and, in doing so, we celebrate as well the fact that Dylan’s maternal ancestors have been farming for over two hundred years on the Llansteffan peninsula (Penrhyn Deuddwr), the land between two rivers, the Tâf and the Tywi.[17] It was the countryside of the Williamses and here, in this simplified family tree, are a good many of those mentioned in this paper:

Sarah = same person ....//.... = half-sisters Green heart = love child. Anne Rose Cottage's father was George Williams, husband of Amy’s sister, Hannah, and Florence's father.
Marg. = Margaret Harries (aka Thomas) who married David Francis of Dolaumeinion; their children and grandchildren settled in Meini, Llettyrneuadd, Down and Laques-newydd.
Mary, the sister of John Williams Pen-y-coed, married John Lloyd of Glogue; their children and grandchildren (including Jane who married William Phillips) settled in Glogue, Graig, Tirbach, Wernoleu, Leicester and New Jersey.
John Harries was also a son of Evan and Anne Harries of Plas Ishaf. John and Jane Harries farmed Llwynbrain, Banc-y-felin, before moving to Herefordshire. Three Harries children married into the Williamses: John, William and Anne.

This is a family tree rooted in the earth of the peninsula, farmed by Dylan’s great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents and two sets of great-great-great-grandparents. His maternal grandmother, Hannah Williams of Waunfwlchan, had been born and brought up here, before moving to Swansea. It was here, in the fields between Maesgwyn and Fernhill, that his mother Florence had spent her childhood holidays with her many cousins. Some of her siblings had been born here, whilst two had lived here all their adult lives. Three others had retired here, whilst Florence herself had lived here for the best part of the 1940s.

It was the land of his aunties, and being farmed out to them as a boy meant that Dylan spent a significant part of his childhood in a rural community in which Welsh was the predominant language. All of Florence’s peninsula relations, including Annie and Jim Jones at Fernhill, spoke Welsh. So did their neighbours and friends: at the 1921 census, ninety-five percent of residents in the two parishes around Fernhill were Welsh speakers. Across the whole peninsula, thirteen percent – more than two hundred people - spoke only Welsh. It was the language of daily life, not just on the farms, but also in the local shops to which Dylan was taken or sent on errands; later, as a teenager, he wrote of “crying aloud, in broken Welsh” to the post-master in Llansteffan, though perhaps this is not something we should take too seriously.[18]

We can be sure, however, that almost everywhere on the peninsula the sound of Welsh was ever-present in the ears of the young poet, as both boy and teenager. It was, too, the language of the pulpit. Noting that he went to Sunday school at Smyrna chapel, where the services were always in Welsh, one of his friends said of the Llangain area:

It was all Welsh – and the children played in Welsh and that’s why I say that Dylan must have had a smattering of Welsh in as much as he couldn’t speak English when he stopped at Fernhill. I should say that in all his surroundings, everybody else spoke Welsh...as a child, you’re bound to pick that up much, much quicker than when you are grown up.[19]

Dylan had been coming here from an early age with his parents, staying for a month at a time in Rose Cottage, Llansteffan, with his mother’s half-sister, Anne, and later on, with his other aunt Annie in Fernhill. There were also other aunts and uncles to spoil him, including Florence’s first cousins at Llwyngwyn, none of whom had children of their own during Dylan’s childhood and teenage years. He stayed for long summer holidays at Fernhill, usually without his parents, and he came, or was sent, at other times of the year, too. It was, Dylan once said, ‘my true childhood’.[20]

The peninsula was a rich concentration of relatives, family history and memories, providing a secure sense of place in what would prove to be an unsettled life. Cwmdonkin Drive had been lost to him in 1937 when his parents sold up and left. From then to his death, he lived in twelve different places, as well as at several addresses in London and four in Laugharne. But here on the peninsula, Dylan was bachgen y fro, a local boy, not born here, but someone who belonged and who would always feel his belonging. The farm was home, he once wrote of Fernhill, but so was much of its hinterland. [21]

Because he had been known here since childhood, locals could place him, identifying him as the nephew of this farm or the cousin of that one, the great-grandson of a family that had filled many seats at Capel Newydd for most of the 1800s. The family were so ubiquitous that even ordinary encounters in Dylan’s daily life would bring contact with his relations, helping to affirm his place in the community. The publican at the Edwinsford in Llansteffan, for example, was his mother’s cousin, whose daughter had been named after Florence. When Dylan bought meat from Billy Thomas the butcher in Llansteffan or a hat for his mother from the Bowen sisters or cigarettes from Harry Jones or stamps from Henry Jones in Llangain, or took his bike for repair to Daniel Evans at Brook Forge, he was buying from family.[22]

Dylan's cousin, Heulwen Morris, Llwyngwyn, 2012

Dylan was a sixth generation Williams, with gravestones and family bibles (at least two survive to this day) with genealogical data to prove it, not to mention farms on the ground. He had so many local connections that he could walk unchallenged on family land across a large part of the sea end of the peninsula. You could do a similar walk on footpaths today, and not meet another soul; but in Dylan’s time farming was still labour-intensive and thus more sociable - take a look at the photos in Haydn Williams’ excellent book on Llangain. There were people about, working in the fields and farmyards, so walking brought contact with others and the chance for a chat, about this cousin and that, and all the aunties in between. And Dylan would have had his own bag of tales to tell; his mother was the family historian and a good storyteller to boot: "she was tremendously interesting, because she was full of the lore of Carmarthenshire. She had all sorts of information."

Dylan also had access to the fields of his quasi-relations, close friends or neighbours who were not related by blood or marriage, but who had become so absorbed into family life that they became aunties and uncles. Such were the Harrieses of Pilroath, an imposing mansion that sits at the confluence of Fernhill Brook and the Tywi. It was the farm of Tom Llewelyn Harries J.P., a wealthy Welsh-speaking gentleman farmer, like his father before him, with a particular interest in pigs and politics. The Harries and Williams families had always been close: it was a Harries daughter, for example, who looked after Dylan and Caitlin’s eldest son, Llewelyn, when he was sent across to spend a large part of each summer on Pilroath – later in life, he took the name of Tom Llewelyn.[23]

Imagine, too, the young Dylan playing in the fields around Fernhill, getting to know Annie’s friends and neighbours. Some of the childhood relationships that he made then continued in later life. When he and Caitlin were at Blaencwm, they would walk across to call with Rees Davies at Creigiau-bach (‘I was driving them home many times.’) He was just a year older than Florence, and had been born and brought up on nearby farms, as had his father and grandfather before him. And, like them, Rees was a general carpenter; between the three of them, they would have been working on the Williams’ farms for over a hundred years, making everything from cots to coffins, and much of the equipment needed in the fields.[24]

Thomas and Anne Williams of Waunfwlchan, Dylan's maternal great-grandparents

Rees' farm was just along the lane from Fernhill; it was also right next to Florence’s cousins at Pencelli-uchaf, whilst his fields bordered with those of Jim’s sister, Rachel, at Pentrewyman (aunt Rach Morgan in The Peaches). In his work, Rees travelled from one farm to another, inevitably bringing and taking away family news and local gossip as he did so. He was thus well-placed to define for others how Dylan fitted within the genealogy of the countryside. So, too, were door-to-door traders, such as Florence’s cousins at the Edwinsford, who took a pony and trap around the farms delivering meat. There were several others, bringing groceries, paraffin and other household goods, tying together the threads of community, with news on what was what and who was who.[25]

Working to bring in the harvest, as Caitlin often did, as well as drinking in the kitchen, rather than the bar, at the Farmers’ Arms, also helped locals to place Dylan within the narrative of their farming community, as the landlady recalled:

They wanted to come to my small kitchen…to enjoy it, to be quiet, for nobody to know they were in there, round the fire in the gegin…he used to like to have Llangain people there…some of the boys from Llangain, and talking to those always… so many that I can’t remember half their names…talking about Fernhill. Very often you’d hear him talking to them in there.[26]

In short, Dylan was no Johnny-come-lately from the east. This is something I hope to discuss with Heulwen, as well as the many changes that have happened since his birth. Today, she farms some three hundred acres, but in 1914 (and for all of Dylan’s lifetime) the Williamses and their close relatives were working a dozen farms with over a thousand acres between them. The family had carried just enough clout for Florence’s half-sister, Anne, to marry into local gentry, the Gwyn family of Plas Cwrthir, with whom some of the Williamses shared an interest in the breeding of horses, as well as having other social contacts with them. Anne later bought a seven-room house in Llansteffan (Rose Cottage), and another in Ferryside, and was worth £83,000 at her death.

Florence’s grandfather, Thomas Williams of Waunfwlchan, was a leading figure at Capel Newydd, a member of the Carmarthen Board of Guardians and, in his younger days, an overseer of the poor. It’s said he also dabbled in the wool trade in Llansteffan. He also owned another property in Llangynog. At his death, Thomas Williams’ net estate was, in today’s terms, worth over £27,000.[27]

Most of the Williamses were tenant farmers, but their farmhouses also told a story of ambition and status: Maesgwyn, Llwyngwyn and Waunfwlchan, for example, had seventeen bedrooms between them, whilst Mwche was a large country house. It boasted both a dining and drawing room, six bedrooms, two kitchens, scullery and dairy, with extensive farm buildings, including a coach house and saddle room, not to mention ‘a nice trout stream…and good Partridge and Wild Fowl Shooting.’ [28]

Robert Phillips and family outside Mwche, c1912.

Maesgwyn as Dylan knew it, with his aunt, Sarah Evans

Many of the family farms had live-in servants. Maesgwyn had four, two of whom worked in the house. Jim and Annie Jones had five servants at Pentowyn, including a cook, a domestic postion through which Jim seems to have been making a statement about himself. There were only three other dedicated cooks on the whole peninsula, all working in grand country houses. Jim’s fondness for the grand seems to have been catching: Annie’s sister, Polly, was staying with them over the 1901 census, and she described her occupation as ‘Living on Own Means’, the first and only time that she had ever used such a description. [29]

But despite all his farm hands, Jim was still a hopeless farmer. According to his in-laws, the Williamses, he was "too much of a gentleman there to work", though drink, they said, also played its part: “…he was taking his shoes off the horses then, to have a message to go to the blacksmiths in Llansteffan. For to go down to have a drink.”

By Christmas 1908, Jim, Annie and their son Idris had moved into Fernhill, paying rent to the daughter of the so-called Fernhill hangman. It suited Jim better, a small but imposing mansion, with just a handful of acres to worry about, but even these he neglected – there was "no work in him…left Fernhill farm to ruins." When I read Fern Hill now, I realise that Fernhill’s fields could not have been, by any stretch of the imagination or poetic licence, ‘fields of praise’. Dylan’s own honest appraisal of the farm comes in The Peaches, completed in 1938:

The ramshackle outhouses had tumbling, rotten roofs, jagged holes in their sides, broken shutters, and peeling whitewash; rusty screws ripped out from the dangling, crooked boards; the lean cat of the night before sat snugly between the splintered jaws of bottles, cleaning its face, on the tip of the rubbish pile that rose triangular and smelling sweet and strong to the level of the riddled cart-house roof.

But Jim continued to play the gent; he was ‘big in his ways’, affirming his status by choosing to attend church rather than chapel: "He liked everyone to think that he was Gentleman Jim….he wanted to cut a dash always…" Jim had every reason for swanking it up at church: he was family. One of his first cousins had married the vicar of Llangain, who was also the Rural Dean, a member of the Governing Body of the Church in Wales, and much else besides in both church and local affairs, a real man of the cloth, the son of a draper.

It was through the church, where one of his uncles had been a church warden for almost thirty years, that Jim could rub shoulders with the Gwyns of Plas Cwrthir, perhaps taking satisfaction from knowing that his sisters at Pentrewyman and his cousins at Penhen, Clynmawr and Llwyn, worked hand in hand with the Gwyns, in organising church events. And received equal billing in the following week’s Carmarthen Journal.

Daily life at Fernhill was a struggle for Annie and Jim but their son, Idris, made the best of it, dropping his Welsh, and putting on an accent to lord it over the locals:

He had the same old thing…swagger...'I live in a mansion,' he once told a friend. 'You live in a blacksmith’s shop.' [30]

Pleasing and unpleasant deaths

‘Time has put its maggots on my track.’ Dylan Thomas, age 18

The greying profile of the Williams family might help explain why Dylan was so absorbed, as a teenage poet, with decay and mortality. Having aunties as old as grannies meant that deaths were a recurring element of his growing up. At just sixteen, he was reflecting in his letters on being soaked in morbidity. He described the fragility of life, and the cancer that lay hidden within even the happiest third-former.[31]

By now, he would have learned something about the deaths that had left their mark on Rose Cottage in Llansteffan, where he’d spent his summer holidays with his aunt Anne. Just two years into married life, Anne lost her young daughter (tubercular peritonitis and meningitis) and husband (acute nephritis) within three months of each other. The next to go was her eldest son, dying of TB in his twenties, followed a year later by Anne’s mother, Amy. On the day of the funeral in August 1917, Anne’s second son died. Barely out of his teens, he drowned swimming off the beach in Llansteffan where Dylan and his parents would have usually been holidaying, but his mother was at Amy’s funeral.[32]

Florence was regularly faced with the prospect of journeying to family funerals; her aunt, Anne Llwyngwyn, died in 1920. Two years later, Anne Rose Cottage died of cancer of the womb, followed by Anna Llwyngwyn, a first cousin who died of nephritis and uraemic convulsions. Then came the death of another aunt Anne, who shot herself with a pistol. There were also two still-births at Llwyngwyn, and the death of a baby cousin in Ferryside. The message would have been very clear to a young poet: birth can be a doublecross, that green fuse could blow at any time.[33]

For Dr Alban Evans, the poet’s deliverer, it blew in September 1932, when he drowned in Oxwich Bay. Two months later, Dylan went to the funeral of a teacher from his school, and wondered what his own burial would be like. Two months after that, his favourite aunt, Annie Fernhill, died of heart failure, not of cancer of the womb as Dylan thought.

Dylan feigned lack of interest but there was a surge of death poetry thereafter; family gravestones with their tales of infant and childhood deaths, a suicide and a drowning in the family, diseased lungs and kidneys, two sisters with diseased wombs and babies born dead from the womb (including his mother’s still-born child), as well as a drowned deliverer of babies, provided part of a maggot-rich harvest for a teenage poet to reap. Not to mention the deaths of the poet’s grandparents, all four of whom had gone by the time he was three.[34]

Dylan didn’t go to Annie’s funeral; if he had, he could have learnt something about the Williamses and their community. She died in February 1933, having seen out her last years in a one-room hovel, Mount Pleasant, kept going by handouts from her cousins. But Annie wasn’t going to go without a show; she was, after all, the fifth generation of Williamses to farm on the peninsula. She had been born close to the Tywi’s edge, married a local man, and then lived here for the rest of her life. More than that, Gentleman Jim was also deep Llangain, third-generation on his father’s side, and fifth on his mother’s, whose family had counted local gentry amongst their friends. No wonder, then, that Annie’s funeral at Capel Newydd was ‘largely attended’, as The Welshman put it, a once-radical newspaper whose founding publisher had married into Jim’s family.[35]

Annie Jones Fernhill

The newspaper had no doubt that such attendance, in freezing weather, was "ample testimony to the high esteem in which the deceased was held throughout the neighbourhood." Annie would have gone on foot, her coffin borne shoulder-high by a relay of bearers along the three miles from her cottage to the gates of the chapel, where the principal bearers were waiting, including Rees Davies who had made the coffin:

She was a woman who worked hard…oh yes, she was a good woman.

Others would later talk of her kindness: ‘quite educated, jovial, talkative…kind, nicely spoken, gave plenty of welcome, always a cup of tea.’ And always a kiss and a hug for her favourite nephew. Annie, wrote Dylan in After the Funeral, had a fountain heart that ‘once fell in puddles/Round the parched worlds of Wales…’. And the parchs were out in force, Baptist and Methodist ministers sharing duties with the Rural Dean to celebrate Annie’s life. After the service, the mourners stood several deep at the graveside, themselves encircled at a respectful distance by a large crowd of local people, all joining together in the Tywi-side hymn, Bydd myrdd o rhyfeddodau.[36]

The gathering was ‘representative’, noted another newspaper. Various dignitaries were present, as well as factory owners and shopkeepers, and one or two ladies of a certain social standing, including Mrs G. Barrett Evans of the Glyn who, at seventy years of age, would have been driven to Capel Newydd by her chauffeur. Her late husband was a cousin of Lady Kylsant of Coomb mansion, a daughter of the Morris banking dynasty. Some would even have wondered if Lady Kylsant herself might have been present, but she was still nursing his Lordship, who had only just come out jail after doing time for fraud. [37]

Plas Llwynddu, 1970s, and its coach house and outbuildings.

Miss Lloyd of Plas Llwynddu, one of the finest mansions in the county, was at the graveside. Her brother and his wife, who were first cousins, later moved into the Plas; they were both first cousins to Jim Jones, as was Miss Lloyd herself, who was also related to Annie. It was all rather genetically cosy but having a grand mansion in the family was not to be sniffed at. The young Dylan was quick off the mark, writing to his sister, who was staying in Fernhill, teasing her about moving in the gayest Llangain society.[38] In truth, they were farmers not gentry, estuary families who had profitably worked the fields along the edges of the Tywi for over a hundred years. Between Llwynddu and the river, they formed the core of Jim’s relatives who, in Dylan’s childhood and teenage years, were still farming over six hundred acres between them.[39]

Yet, farmers or not, one of the most intriguing questions about Jim Jones remains unresolved. He was a grandson of the Morrises of Clomendy and Penhen, amongst the most financially astute farming families on the peninsula, who had done well from their interests in a number of local farms, as well as from properties in Carmarthen.[40] But was Gentleman Jim also related through them to the family of David Morris, the founder of the Morris banking business, who had been born and brought up on an estuary farm? If Jim was, then he, too, would have been a distant cousin of Lady Kylsant.[41]

The Williamses were well-established in farming and chapel circles, but the turn-out for the funeral suggests that they were also close to the local political establishment. John Lewis of Meini, a neighbour of the Williamses, and both a cousin and uncle to them, served as the rural district councillor throughout the 1930s and 1940s. An influential local politician, Lewis had also been chairman of the parish council. With him at the funeral, were the current chairman, as well as his predecessor of seven years. The Williamses’ position was also strengthened through their in-laws: Jim Jones’ family had contributed several chairmen to the parish council, whilst his cousin, the vicar of Llangain, had been the district councillor during the 1920s.

The Williamses also had other footholds in peninsula public life. After settling in at Mwche, their cousin Robert Phillips joined the Llansteffan parish council, and later became treasurer of the farmers’ union, manager of Llanybri school and a member of the Carmarthen Board of Guardians. During the period 1900-1920, another Williams cousin, John Francis of Down farm, Llansteffan, had served on both the parish and district councils.[42]

But the Williams grip went even further. Close friends were also involved in local politics, including Tom Harries of Pilroath, who served for twenty years as county councillor. It’s hardly surprising that, on his retirement, he was succeeded by one of Heulwen’s uncles. Isaac Evans of Glogue farm, right next door to Fernhill, was also a district councillor. Another neighbour and friend, William Thomas, was clerk to the parish council. He was now in his late sixties, but he braved the cold to be one of the bearers at Annie’s funeral. His standing was all the greater for being a deacon at Smyrna chapel, Llangain, along with two Williams relatives. Through chapel, church and council, the Williamses were well and truly connected to the local power grid.[43]

Whether we look at their political and social connections, or the size of their farmhouses, or the extent of their acreage, it would be wrong to view the Williamses as unpossessed peasantry, as Dylan described them in 1945. By that date, most of the them had bought their farms, and were no longer tenants. There were some exceptions, such as Annie and Jim, but on the whole the Williamses had flourished through hard work and astute marriages, so much so that very few of them had felt the need to leave their farms for the mines and industries in the east, though one of Florence’s uncles did go west, all the way to Tenafly, New Jersey where, he boasted, he managed the ranch of the banker, J. P. Morgan.

A cowboy in the family? Well, not quite. Banker Morgan didn’t have a ranch or any other property at Tenafly, and rancher John Lloyd worked as a labourer on a local farm. Still, it must have been one of Dylan’s favourite bedtime stories; and for a young boy on holiday, Lloyd was always worth a visit at his retirement home in Llansteffan, where he enchanted people with his tall American stories about himself, his adventures and the wildlife: (“bees were the size of British robins, and the robins as big as blackbirds.”) [44]

Blaencwm: from rural idyll to dead end

“He would talk about the farm life, but he wouldn’t talk about Swansea, that I remember.” Aeronwy Thomas

Neither Annie’s move from Fernhill nor her death brought Dylan’s visits to the peninsula to an end. His aunt Polly had moved into Blaencwm, just down the lane from Llwyngwyn, so that’s where I’ll go next, an easy ramble down a wooded valley, bringing me closer again to the Tywi. Polly had retired here in 1928, as had her brother, Bob, and then her sister Theodosia a little later. For the next six years, Blaencwm became Dylan’s rural retreat, school and work permitting. He came to escape from his father’s rages and discipline, but he found in the countryside the inspiration to write, not just at the cottage but also in the Edwinsford, where the grate "used to be full of his cigarette packets with his poetry on."[45]

Scholars have noted that 1933 was a significant year in Dylan’s poetic development. There were certainly a lot more more poems – almost twice as many - in his 1933 notebook than in any of the notebooks for the preceding years; he filled his first three collections with them. It was also the year in which Dylan, still only eighteeen, had his first poems published in London.

But why 1933? Paul Ferris has wisely observed that for Dylan, as with many writers, place matters: "he drew energy from a location….West Wales, imprinted on him as a child, was the place that consistently provoked him to write.” It’s reasonable to suppose that the creativity of 1933 had much to do with Dylan being able to spend more time on the peninsula. He had left his job on the Evening Post in December 1932; it gave him the freedom, for the very first time, to stay at Blaencwm whenever he wished, or whenever he needed to escape from the troubles of Cwmdonkin Drive.

The ‘Blaencwm effect’ goes wider than the number of notebook poems he wrote at the cottage; insight and inspiration discovered on the peninsula would be carried away, so that poems rooted in Dylan’s experiences around Blaencwm would be started or continued back in Swansea. December 2014 will be the 80^th anniversary of the publication of 18 Poems, Dylan’s first collection. Eight of the poems had been written in the autumn of 1933, when he travelled back and forth between Blaencwm (‘a highly poetical cottage’) and Swansea (‘my nasty, provincial address’). These were poems, says Ferris, that made him famous.

By early 1934, Dylan was thinking more and more about London, and by the end of the year he was living there. But he still continued to visit Blaencwm. He brought his first serious girlfriend, Pamela Hansford Johnson, to the cottage in 1935. She was enchanted:

It was idyllic: the purest and sweetest and floweriest countryside. Through the cottage garden ran a little stream edged with rushes and primroses…a wayside bank so thick with violets and primroses that no green was visible.

Dylan and Caitlin married in 1937, and they were soon at Blaencwm, "staying there much more than holidays, much longer than holidays," noticed Rees Davies. By May the following year, they were living in Laugharne, but the pull of the other side was irresistible. There were excursions across the estuary, for long walks with Glyn Jones, to weddings in Llansteffan and meetings with various writers, including Keidrych Rhys, in Llanybri.

Dylan’s visits became still more frequent when his parents moved to Blaencwm in 1941, after the bombing of Swansea. Florence was now back in the Williams heartland, with eleven cousins and their families living on farms around her, not to mention a good handful of in-laws. Fernhill and Pentrewyman had new occupants, but since both were Florence’s cousins, the fields and tracks of Dylan’s childhood were still open to him: ‘my father obviously felt at home in this part of rural Wales,’ recalled his daughter, Aeronwy.[46]

Not surprisingly, being at Blaencwm provided the opportunity to think once more about his peninsula upbringing. In August 1944 at the cottage, he finished Poem in October, celebrating his thirtieth year to heaven. He writes of the blue, apple-filled days of childhood in summer, and remembers the Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother/ Through the parables/Of sun light/And the legends of the green chapels… Then he recalls the places in which he played when young, along the banks of Fernhill Brook as it falls through Glog-ddu woods on its way to the Tywi: These were the woods the river and sea/Where a boy/In the listening/ Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy/To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.

As it emerges from the trees, the brook meanders down past his auntie Rach’s Pentrewyman. Dylan went to the farm "constantly because his aunt Rachel was there." She was now in her fifties, and had worked on the farm all her life, taking over completely after her brothers had left to marry: "she was very nice to everyone…she was a very good type of person…it was an open house as such…you could do what you liked…it was a very easy-going sort of place." Rachel may have been specially fond of Dylan; he had been due on October 25, her fortieth birthday, but he was two days late. (William Phillips and Tudor Price in D. N. Thomas 2003)

There was also a welcome in the fields from Watt Davies, Rachel’s farm worker. Dylan’s two friends from Swansea, who came in the summer to stay at a neighbouring smallholding, remembered that Watt

was a grand fellow with…any boys that came along, and so we always went up there then to play or to help with the harvest…Watt was always letting us have a ride on the horse after we did the haymaking at Pentrewyman…he was a wonderful jumper and we used to take the first hedge and then the next, and down to the stable…bareback. All the harness was thrown off and we just had the bridle…Prince. He was a wonderful horse… (Phillips and Price, as above)

After work in the fields, there was cawl, ‘brought out of the saucepan where the grease of it hung from the cabbages to your plate’, eaten out of wooden bowls with wooden spoons. Dylan would sometimes stay the night, snuggling up in bed with May, the teenage servant girl. She remembers that Dylan was

always romping about, and down the river…he was very fond of going round the trees to get the apples…in the very hot weather…we’d be all out together. We’d go down to the sea to fish and look for trout…(May Bowen, in D. N. Thomas 2003)

She remembers, too, that ‘he liked horses…he was very interested in horses, always.’ He came ‘every afternoon, and in the morning to do some riding’, leading

…the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

Dylan rode Prince, the carthorse, crossing the land bareback where, honoured among wagons and carts, he was prince of the apple towns, in fields where his aunt toiled long and hard: "The one that was the worker of the ones I knew was Miss Jones – Rachel." The fields of praise in Fern Hill could only be hers, and were certainly not those of her brother, Jim.[47]

When I read Fern Hill, I seldom think of Fernhill, but of the playground of family fields that lay between it and Blaencwm, and particularly of Pentrewyman. It was here that Dylan spent his heedless summer days with his two Swansea friends, not at lonely Fernhill where his cousin, Idris, nearing thirty, was far too old for boys’ play. It was here on Pentrewyman’s one hundred, praiseworthy acres that the hay was really house high, not at Fernhill where much of its fifteen acres had been taken over by reeds and, on the high ground above the house, fern and gorse. It was here on Pentrewyman that the sun of Fern Hill really shone, not at Fernhill, which was a ‘dark and dismal’ place, so shaded by pine trees that the sun rarely struck it. It was here at ‘easy-going’ Pentrewyman that the house was gay, not Fernhill, and it was here at Pentrewyman that May remembers Dylan searching for pheasants, not surprisingly since its top fields, close to Fernhill, were always under corn, and most of the rest in hay.[48]

Fern Hill also tells us how things were when Dylan’s two friends were back in Swansea. It’s a lyrical poem about childhood but the worm at its core is the poet’s painful memory of being alone in a childless land, as he puts it in the poem. The family farms had been empty of children of his own age, as were most of the other farms around Fernhill. It had been, he later said, a lonely place. Florence’s family was in particular crisis: between 1870 and 1902, her Llangain relatives produced just thirteen children, and only three of these went on to have children of their own. The families then experienced an extended period of zero childbirth, lasting for thirty years.[49]

It’s not difficult to imagine what it was like for Dylan to be on his own as a young boy at Fernhill, a ramshackle house of hollow fear, as he put it, a far cry from the lyricism of Fern Hill. The gloomy, musty rooms were lit by oil lamps and candles, and life there, as in all the family farms, was simple: there was an outside earth closet, with water brought into the house from a dipping well two hundred yards away. Washing oneself was done in the kitchen, and cooking was done on an open fire. The house, noted one official survey, suffered from extreme rising dampness and smelt, wrote Dylan in The Peaches, ‘of rotten wood and damp and animals’.

But now, in the summer of 1945, married with two children, Dylan struggled to live peaceably with his parents in over-crowded Blaencwm. Perhaps the future would have taken a different turn if, at this critical point in his life, he’d been able to find somewhere on the peninsula to live. If only Miss Griffiths in Llansteffan had been willing to rent him a house. Messages were exchanged and phone calls made but nothing came of it. His aunt Polly died the following year; if only she had left him her Blaencwm cottage. She had spoiled him all his life but she left it to her siblings. Dylan moved away to a squalid flat in London and then to a wet shack on the banks of a river in Oxford, sustained by dreams of a final escape to America, and pulled back time and again to Blaencwm to care for his ailing parents. [50]

Crossing to the other side

‘I bow before shit, seeing the family likeness in the old familiar faeces, but I will not manure the genealogical tree.’ Dylan Thomas

By the time they moved into the Boat House in 1949, Caitlin already understood the link between Dylan’s writing and the land of his true childhood on the other side. She installed windows in his writing shed so that he could look out over the estuary at the family farms, whose fields and salt marsh stretched from the very tip of the peninsula, filling Dylan’s view as looked across the water. Beyond the ridge, the Williamses and their close relatives were still farming close on a thousand acres, and Caitlin recognised what it meant to him:

He worked a fanatically narrow groove - the groove of direct hereditary descent in the land of his birth, which he never in thought and hardly in body moved out of.[51]

Living in Laugharne made visits easier, and he delighted in taking his London guests across on the ferry to Black Scar Point: "They used to get in the boat across the river estuary and picnic on the other side," recalled one of his Laugharne neighbours. Heulwen’s husband remembers them walking down to the family farms from Laugharne. The Farmers’ Arms in Llanybri was also a popular outing, crossing by ferry and then a footpath across family land: "He was coming very often to see me…him and his wife, walking always…" said the landlady. The pubs in Llansteffan were also within walking distance, or by cabin cruiser for an easier journey, and an illegal drink on a Sunday. But this wasn’t just about picnics and pubs; it was, too, homage and re-rooting after more than three years away in England, where few, if any, poems had emerged. The peninsula was his true hen fro, the old place, and the pilgrims’ ferry across was his conveyance to a Wales that was very different to the one he found himself living in at Laugharne.[52]

In September 1953, Dylan and Florence travelled to the other side, taking with them the photographer, Rollie Mckenna, as well as Dylan’s American agent, John Brinnin, who wrote about the tour in his book, Dylan Thomas in America:

The day was blue, the country still in its midsummer green. Mrs Thomas entertained us with a flow of anecdotes of gentry and yeomanry, called Dylan’s attention to a hundred houses or woodlands or chapels, and seemed altogether delighted in her role of cicerone.

They eventually made their way to Fernhill, where Dylan took them around the rooms, saddened to see that the house had changed for the worse – ‘a few overstuffed pieces of mail-order furniture’, wrote Brinnin sniffily of the interior. Out in the orchard, they picked apples, whilst Dylan told stories about the Fernhill hangman.[53] Then they set off for Llwyngwyn, the ancient homestead of Dylan’s relatives, said Brinnin colourfully:

At the top of the rise we turned into a mud-filled farmyard surrounded by big and small buildings stark with new whitewash. A cluster of people, from infants to withered crones, suddenly popped out of half a dozen doors to look at us with curiosity, and then to welcome us.

The party was met, not by withered crones, but by Florence’s first cousin, Thomas Williams and his wife, Mary Ann. Thomas took them on a tour of the farm, though Brinnin claimed he ‘could not understand a word of our guide’s English’, and complained about getting his feet wet. Heulwen brought them milk, but Brinnin took her for the milkmaid

Inside the bare, scrubbed kitchen with its fireplace big enough for five men to stand abreast in, its hanging sides of bacon, great black iron pots and witches’ brooms, we were given large cups of warm milk out of a pail brought in by a red-faced milkmaid. We drank it, bravely, and were surprised to find we liked it.

Then they were led into an adjoining room to meet Thomas’ sister, Sarah Evans Maesgwyn. The visitors were told, wrote Brinnin, that Sarah ‘was ninety-six years old, quite deaf and unable to speak a word of English.’ In fact, Sarah was eighty-two and spoke English well enough. If she’d been ninety-six, she would have been just five years younger than her mother. Sarah invited them to stay for tea but they declined. They drove back down the lane to Blaencwm, to visit Florence’s brother, Bob. Once more, Brinnin’s memory lets him down and, in his book, he gets the story about Bob hopelessly wrong, including his name.

Afterwards, Florence took them off to Llanybri, where they stopped at Capel Newydd. Her parents and four of her siblings were buried here, alongside a score and more of close peninsula relatives. She paid her respects at one grave after another, "pointing out to Dylan names he had probably forgotten...Dylan followed after his mother silently, listening to her little stories of the dead." The dead also spoke for themselves, though Brinnin says nothing about encountering the imposing tomb that sits next to the Williams graves, that of John Bowen Lloyd Jnr, “who died at Tenafly N.J. USA 2 Dec 1901 aged 24 years”. Did Florence shiver as she walked past the first of her family to die in America?

As they returned at dusk to the Boat House, Florence was bright and sprightly, laughing with Dylan ‘as they recounted old stories the day’s visits had recalled.’ In these last few words, Brinnin tells us something important both about Dylan’s upbringing and the influences on his writing: Florence’s stories about the Llansteffan peninsula and her relatives had been part of his life as child, boy and young man.[54]

A month later, on the day before leaving on his final journey to America, Dylan and Florence crossed once more to the other side, to take tea in the manse with the minister of Capel Newydd. It’s also the chapel’s two hundreth anniversary in 2014, so perhaps this is where I shall end my centenary promenade, climbing through the branches of his unmanured genealogical tree. A good many, perhaps most, of the graves to the left of the entrance path, stretching to the far boundary wall, belong to Florence’s family; a central cluster bears the name Williams, though almost as many others have names such as Harries, Phillips, Lloyd, Francis, Lewis, Davies and Evans, all descending from the Williams of Graig, Lambstone and Pen-y-coed, the Roberts of Maesgwyn and the Harries of Plas Isaf.

I shall search for the most senior Williams grave that’s been found here, that of John Williams (1746-1828) and his wife, Jane (1753-1849) of Graig farm, just across the fields from Fernhill. They were one pair of Dylan’s great- great-great-grandparents and, at the moment, this is as far back as we can reliably trace. I shall then make for Sarah Maesgwyn’s grave, and uncle Bob’s, too, and reflect on how Brinnin got their story so wrong. Sarah died just a few months after Dylan, whilst Brinnin was working on his book; we know now that, as he was writing, he was drinking heavily, and taking pheno-barbitone, benzedrine and various other drugs. It does explain a lot.[55]

I shall seek out the modest grave of Dylan’s eldest first cousin, Gladys Williams of Waunfwlchan, who died in 1893, aged eight. Her parents are not named on her gravestone. But Gladys' birth certificate tells us that her mother was Anne Williams, though her father is not named. But which Anne Williams? Is it Florence's sister Annie Jones Fernhill, giving birth to Gladys long before her marriage to Jim Jones? No. Gladys' death certificate tells us that she was the ‘daughter of Anne Gwyn Late Williams’, of Plas Uchaf, Llanybri. This was Florence’s half-sister, Anne, who later moved to Rose Cottage, in Llansteffan.

My last stop on this walk will be Annie and Jim Jones’ simple grave. A plaque reads ‘Relatives of Dylan Thomas’. I’ve always thought the plaque incongruous, given that so many of the other graves are also those of his relatives. I shall pause here, and wonder yet again: would this have been a better place to bury Dylan, next to his grandparents, aunties and cousins, in the earth that meant so much to him? The ground is comfy here...

you can twitch your legs without putting them in the sea.

Come on home, Mr Thomas.

There’s strong beer for tea.

And cake.

Acknowlegments

I am greatly indebted to Alun Davies Llansteffan, Susan Deacon and Haydn Williams Llangain, without each of whom little would have been possible. I have also benefitted greatly from the notes of the Llansteffan family historian, Louie Davies. Many thanks, too, to Eiluned Rees, Gillian Cecchini, Felicity Cleaves, Elizabeth Morgan, Elizabeth Richards, Terry Wells at Carmarthen Archives and Mick Felton and Simon Hicks at Seren Books. I acknowledge my continuing debt to the Colin Edwards archive of interviews at the National Library of Wales. Many thanks as well to Phil Edwards, Delyth Jenkins, Deric John, Stevie Krayer, Dora and Glenys Lewis Peniel, Heulwen Morris, Steve Peace and Robert Williams. And Mark Bowen at Carmarthen Library, Richard Jones at the BMA Library, staff at the National Library of Wales and John Vincler of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York. Finally, thanks to Moira and Chris Sanders at La Joliere, Gathemo, where the last phase of work on this essay was completed.

Images: My thanks to Peter Davies, Susan Deacon, Phil Edwards, Elizabeth Morgan, Heulwen Morris, Sara Morris, Steve Peace, Haydn Williams, the Rollie Mckenna archive at the University of Arizona and the National Library of Wales.

Notes

CE/NLW = Colin Edwards interviews at the National Library of Wales, most of which were done in the 1960s. They have been edited in two volumes by David N. Thomas as Dylan Remembered 1914-1934 and 1935-1953, published by Seren in 2003 and 2004.

[1] Three collections etc: 18 Poems, Twenty-five Poems and The Map of Love, which comprised 59 poems, of which almost two-thirds (64%) had first been written in Dylan’s teens. He published Deaths and Entrances in 1946, which had three poems first written in his teens. Other teenage achievements include having his first poems published in New English Weekly and the Sunday Referee (both in 1933) and winning the Sunday Referee’s Book Prize (April 1934).

genius matured at seventeen: Ralph Maud, editor of The Notebook Poems 1930-1934, Dent 1989.

infantilism, difficulties with drink and women: see Stephen Knight, The Independent on Sunday, October 26 2003.

[2] Dr Alban Evans (1875-1932): see his obituary in the British Medical Journal, October 8 1932. He died whilst swimming off Oxwich Bay, Gower. He was appointed Ear, Nose and Throat Surgeon at Swansea hospital in 1913. Days after delivering Dylan, Evans set off for Ciliau Aeron, a village in the Aeron valley, a few miles from Aberaeron. He went to research the family papers at Tyglyn mansion; his letter of November 19 1914 describing his visit is at the National Library of Wales. See also Pioneer Printing in Wales, by D. Rhys Phillips, Transactions and archaeological record, Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, vol 13, 1938. Phillips says of Evans: he was “a single man and singular in his loneliness, a lover of historical books and a collector of family deeds, which he greatly prized.”

visitors to Cwmdonkin Drive: May Bowen, CE/NLW.

[3] brought up dearly and closely: Gwilym Price, who knew Dylan at Cwmdonkin Drive and Fernhill. His mother and Florence were good friends, and Price had also been a pupil of DJ Thomas (CE/NLW).

No children of their own: see Thomas, 2003, ch. 1.

first boy to be born to Florence’s close family: this analysis is confined to births in the sixteen years 1898 and 1914 to Florence’s nine siblings, her six Llangain first cousins (all children of Evan Williams of Llwyngwyn farm, see Thomas (2003) p182) and three of her four Ferryside first cousins (children of Amy Williams and David Jones – see the family tree in Note 15 below). The last boys born to these siblings and cousins before 1898 were Idris Jones of Fernhill b.1897; Thomas Gwyn b.1892 and William Williams b.1897, the sons of Florence’s half-sister Anne Williams of Rose Cottage, Llansteffan. There was one other boy born in this period 1898-1914 - Oswald Hall (1907), son of Florence’s Ferryside first cousin, Elizabeth Ann; but she left Ferryside in 1906 to marry and live in Southsea (1911 census), where Oswald was born and brought up and where she died in 1919, so I have not included her as close family. Oswald was also well outside the spoiling range of the Williams clan. I have no information on the births to Florence’s first cousins (see Thomas 2003 pp184-85) who lived in Llandyfaelog and Croesyceilog. Contact between the Williamses and their Llandyfaelog relations seems to have been very limited.

boys just as rare on his father’s side: by his “his father’s side” I refer to D J Thomas’ four siblings, Jane Anne, Lizzie, William and Arthur. Only Jane Anne Greville had children, four girls born between 1888 and 1895. Of these four, three married, all after Dylan was born. Of the three, only one had a child, a boy, b.1917 (see Thomas 2003 pp187-188).

all but one of first cousins were girls: first cousins = the children of his parents’ siblings. Dylan had nine first cousins. There were five on his maternal side; three were boys but two died before Dylan was three so he grew up with just one boy first cousin, Idris Jones of Fernhill. The two girls were Theodosia Williams b.1904, daughter of Florence’s brother, John and his wife Elizabeth Ann, of St Thomas, Swansea (and later of New Quay) and Doris Williams b.1902, daughter of his mother’s half-sister Anne Williams of Rose Cottage, Llansteffan. Dylan’s paternal first cousins were four girls, the Greville sisters – see above. These six girl first cousins were all much older than Dylan, and would have seemed much more like aunties.

everybody mothered Dylan: Nancy Treacher nee Auckland, the granddaughter of a first cousin of Dylan’s father called Annie Righton, who lived a few streets away, and whose three daughters and two granddaughters were in and out of the Cwmdonkin house when Dylan was a young boy. Annie lived in Burman Street, just off Walter Road in Swansea, and just a five minute walk from Cwmdonkin Drive. See Thomas 2003 pp189-190 on Annie and p38 for an interview with Nancy Treacher describing visits to Cwmdonkin Drive and at CE/NLW.

[4] Bethesda: it was along the lane from Fernhill, set back from the road where Alltygrug is today. It was built in 1773, and was an off-shoot of Capel Newydd, Llanybri. The last service held there was c1939. The chapel was later demolished. The caretaker of the chapel lived downstairs in Bethesda House, whilst the upstairs was the chapel vestry. You can see the location of the chapel on early OS maps at http://www.peoplescollectionwales.co.uk/Places .Bethesda House is there today, but modernised. Bethesda chapel and House are in Under Milk Wood.

[5] Bedtime stories: his first cousin, William Williams, second son of Anne Williams, Rose Cottage, Llansteffan, drowned in 1917 in the estuary below Llansteffan castle. Dylan’s great-uncle, David Jones, was the coxswain of the Ferryside life boat. For more on him and the other Ferryside relations, see Thomas (2011).

Over Sir John’s hill: this poem has always puzzled me. Sir John’s hill is in Laugharne and the river estuary below is that of the Tâf but Dylan refers on three occasions in the poem to the Towy (Tywi). Ferris (1999 p230) suggests that the poem is “firmly framed in the view from the hut.” That is, Dylan is looking out of his writing shed at the hill. That seems right, but Dylan could not possibly see the Towy from the shed. Even if he were standing on the hill itself, he still would not be able to see the Towy. Perhaps Dylan was referring to the broader estuary south of Wharley Point, more than three miles away, where the Tâf, the Towy and the Gwendraeth join at Salmon Point Scar. This seems unlikely because in the first stanza of the poem Dylan refers to “the river Towy below”i.e. below his writing shed or below the hill.

morning prayer: it’s in Under Milk Wood. The tributaries are the Swadde and Gwili. The landscape: Carreg Cennen, Golden Grove, Grongar Hill.

[6] Paternal grandmother: Anne Thomas nee Lewis. She gives her birthplace, as does her father William Lewis, as Llangadog in census returns. In 1841 and 1851, she is living with her parents at Black Rock, Llandingat, Llandovery. According to Dylan’s mother, Florence, A Visit to Grandpa’s is about William Lewis, Dylan’s great-grandfather; he was a gardener, who lived much of his life in Carmarthen, including a period with Dylan’s grandparents at The Poplars in Johnstown, and he is there at the 1881 census, age 86 ie born in 1795. He died on February 20 1888, aged 93, at The Poplars, of chronic bronchitis (death certificate), and was buried on February 23 in the churchyard at Llangadog, as church records show (Carmarthenshire Archives). Dylan, whose own paternal grandfather had died before he was born, had heard the story about William Lewis from his father, said Florence: “Well now, that was a story that his father told him when he was only a very little boy. He couldn’t have been more than about four or five.” (CE/NLW). Dylan’s paternal grandfather, Evan Thomas, had also been born upstream, on a farm near Brechfa, just a few miles east of Llangadog. The river Marlais, Dylan’s middle name, flows past Brechfa before joining the Cothi and then the Tywi.

an aunt in Llangadog: this was Ellen Ann Lewis, who married William Thomas, the brother of D J Thomas, Dylan’s father. For more, see The Tywi page on this site.

[7] maternal grandmother: Hannah Williams, born at Pencelli-isaf in 1840 before moving to Waunfwlchan farm within the year.

undeniably mad: letter to Oscar Williams, July 30 1945, in The Collected Letters (2000)

[8] Johnstown: today, the top or northern boundary of the Llanseffan peninsula is generally considered to be the A40 truck road that runs from Carmarthen to St Clears, and Johnstown straddles both sides of the road. But in the time of Dylan’s father and grandfather, and up until the 1950s, the boundary was the GWR railway line, with Johnstown confined to its north side. It was still largely a rural settlement, separated from Carmarthen by fields, and having as much in common, if not more, with the peninsula as with the town..

Dylan’s father, DJ Thomas (1876-1952): he had been born and raised in The Poplars, Johnstown. His parents lived here from about the mid 1870s to his mother’s death in 1917. DJ’s visits to the Poplars are mentioned in the interviews with Mary Davies and namesake DJ Thomas at CE/NLW and see Thomas (2003) p195. DJ Thomas also refers to DJ’s visits to Johnstown to see his old school friends, including Daniel Jones the Tailor, who is mentioned in A Visit to Grandpa’s. DJ Thomas also mentions that Dan Tailor made DJ’s suits for him. At the 1901 and 1911 censuses, Daniel Jones b.1872 was a tailor at 1 and then 4 Llansteffan Road, Johnstown. DJ Thomas also talks about DJ coming back to see another former school friend, Emyr “Evie”Lloyd the carpenter. I can find no such person in any census from 1881 onwards in the Carmarthen registration district. DJ Thomas was possibly referring to Evan Lloyd Davies, a carpenter, born in Johnstown a year before Dylan’s father, DJ, and who lived there most of his life – he is at 27 Llansteffan Road, Johnstown in 1911. He was the grandson of John and Amy Lloyd, and the son of one of their unmarried daughters; he was brought up by John and Amy. He was probably known locally as Evan or Evie Lloyd, even though he had been given his father’s last name of Davies.

Florence’s relatives: Dylan’s maternal grandfather, George Williams (1838-1905), grew up in and around Johnstown: at the 1851 census, he is at “Alltyknap”, Llanllwch and at other census dates gives his birthplace as Alltycnap and Llanllwch. Florence’s brother, John, was also born here. See Thomas (2003) note 43 on page 288.

Boksburg Hall: on Manor Way, Llanllwch. The Hall was bought about 1908 by John Francis (1858-1942), who was a first cousin once removed to Dylan’s mother, Florence. John’s mother, Margaret Francis nee Harries/Thomas, of Dolaumeinion farm, Llangain, was the sister of Anne Williams nee Harries/Thomas of Waunfwlchan farm, who was Florence’s grandmother.

John lived at Boksburg with his siblings, Jane (1862-1941) and Theodosia (1856-1933) who, according to the census, worked in the farm’s dairy. Boksburg had extensive out-buildings, including a coach house, along with seven acres of land. It had originally been Croft Cottage to which a Georgian-style extension had been added. In Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, Thomas Lloyd writes of Boksburg: "early c19 three-storey three-bay house, possibly on an earlier core, the name from a late c19 owner returned from South Africa." This was a retired mine owner called David Davies who had made a fortune in South Africa (he is at Boksburg Hall in the 1901 census, and John Francis is there in 1911). It is a Grade 2 listed building and today is the headquarters of the Carmarthenshire Cheese Company (information on Boksburg came from Dora [1918-] and Glenys Lewis [1920-], John’s great- nieces, and published in Thomas [2003] p294 and from Steve Peace in 2013. Dora inherited Boksburg on John’s death, and sold it in 2002.) A family tree follows:

* Margaret, Anne and William Harries (all also surnamed Thomas) were siblings. For more on why some of the Harries family changed their surname to Thomas, see the Dylan's peninsula family tree (in full blossom) page on this site. For more on this family tree, see Notes on the Francis and Williams families at https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandtheedgeoflove/home

[9] Attacked by bull at Pentrewyman: see the Carmarthen Journal, May 24 1872. She was Emily Jones, the daughter of John and Mary Jones of Llwynddu Lodge, Llangain.

[10] Jim’s family graves: Jim’s mother was Rachel Jones nee Morris, and for data on her see Notes 35 and 39 below. She died in October 1874 whilst giving birth. The “midwife” was Jane Evans of Maesteg, Llansteffan, mentioned on the death certificate. Rachel was buried in Llangain churchyard, as her burial record shows; the baby survived and was called Rachel. Rachel Senior’s mother, Elizabeth, had died in 1867, whilst Jim’s other grandmother, Anne Jones of Penyclun farm, had died about the same time ie between the 1861 and 1871 censuses, probably c1869. Various members of the Morris family are buried in Llangain churchyard. Three of Jim’s mother’s sisters are also buried here, as well as Richard, her son (see below). Data on the children etc taken from census returns for Pentrewyman farm: in 1881, there were nine children in all, with Jim the oldest at 16, with one domestic servant and one agricultural labourer; and in 1891, there were eleven children in all, with no servants/labourers etc. There had been four in 1871. After Jim left Pentrewyman on his marriage to Annie Williams in 1893, the farm was run by his brother, David, and then by their sister, Rachel (auntie Rach in The Peaches), until about 1929.

further accidents in 1890: William Lewis of Llettyrneuadd, who had married Sarah Francis, a first cousin once removed to Dylan’s mother, Florence, was struck by lightning whilst ploughing (The Welshman May 16 1890, and see the above family tree). A farm bailiff was killed by a bull at Plas Cwrthir farmyard (The Welshman August 29 1890.)

[11] Jim’s brother: Richard Jones (1873-1901). Sometime in the 1890s, Richard left Pentrewyman to work as a cattle man on Bremenda Uchaf, a farm on the banks of the Tywi, just east of Llanarthne; he is there in the 1901 census. He died on September 20 that year whilst quarrying stone, presumably for his employer, at Ynyswen farm, Llanegwad. He was crushed by a large stone and died nine hours later from internal bleeding (death certificate). The inquest is reported in The Welshman, September 27 1901.

Died of agriculture: Jim and Annie had recently moved from Tirbach to Pentowyn when Richard was killed. They are there at the 1901 census. It soon became clear to his relatives that Jim was drinking. Mary Ann Williams of Llwyngwyn said of him there: “…he was taking his shoes off the horses then, to have a message to go to the blacksmiths in Llansteffan. For to go down to have a drink.” CE/NLW.

Obituary for Jim's father, Richard Jones: Carmarthen Weekly Reporter July 13 1906, probate August 1906.

Parish council etc: Carmarthen Journal, March 18 1904, February 3 1905.

Pentowyn sale: Auctioneer's notes, Messers J Howell Thomas and Son, Carmarthen Journal, March 27 1908. Jim had decided in or before November 1907 to sell-up - see the court case against him by a farm worker in the Carmarthen Journal, December 11 1908. The sale of Pentowyn took place in September 1908; see the Carmarthen Journal of September 18 1908. You can see the sale advertisement detailing the animals and machinery to be sold here: https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3763705/3763710/35/Pentowin

unburied carcasses: see the Carmarthen Journal October 9 1908.

[12] On hunting terms etc: email from Alun Davies, Llansteffan, December 18 2013, with information from a descendent of the Morrises of Penhen, who “recalls family stories of the Morris family attending hunts at the Coomb because they were related.”

[13] Moon ploughing: letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, early November 1933, in The Collected Letters (2000).

bronchitis: see Note 6 above.

Ferryside relations: for details on these, see Thomas (2011).

[14] Farmers’ Arms and Sarah Evans, landlady: CE/NLW interview and Thomas (2003) chapter 6.

[15] Talking about his mother: Sarah Evans, CE/NLW.

great-great grandparents: John and Hannah Williams of Pen-y-coed were married on November 7 1814 in Llangynog. Evan and Anne Harry/Harries of Plas Isaf, Llanybri, were married on November 12 1812 in Llansteffan. According to the Llansteffan historian, Louie Davies, Evan Harries’ mother was Margaret Harry (1763-1837). His father is not known. No birth record has been found for him. See Thomas (2013) and for more detail go to the Family trees page on this site. Three of the Harries children, John, William and Anne, married into the Williamses:

Sarah = same person ....//.... = half-sisters Green heart = love child. Anne Rose Cottage’s father was George Williams, husband of Amy’s sister, Hannah, and father of Florence.
Marg. = Margaret Harries (aka Thomas) who married David Francis of Dolaumeinion; their children and grandchildren settled in Meini, Llettyrneuadd, Down and Laques-newydd.
Mary, the sister of John Williams Pen-y-coed, married John Lloyd of Glogue; their children and grandchildren (including Jane who married William Phillips) settled in Glogue, Graig, Tirbach, Wernoleu, Leicester and New Jersey.
John (who was also a son of Evan and Anne Harries of Plas Isaf) and Jane Harries farmed Llwynbrain, Banc-y-felin, before moving to Herefordshire.
Thomas, Margaret, Theodocia, Anne and William Harries, as well as some of their siblings, had previously changed their surname to Thomas – see the Dylan's peninsula family tree (in full blossom) page on this site.

dropped dead in the pub: Thomas Phillips died after a heart attack in the Farmers’ Arms (The Welshman, 24/8/1906). He had married Theodocia Harries/Thomas in 1865, the daughter of Evan and Anne Harries. Thomas and Theodocia (who predeceased him) farmed Plas Isaf, with their children, Robert and Ann, who were farming Mwche at 1911. Thomas was the brother of William Phillips, the grandfather of Vera Killick. William and Thomas were sons of Cwmllyfri farm, Llanybri.

Plas Isaf came back into the Williams fold in 1929 when Mary Ann Davies married Thomas Williams of Llwyngwyn, one of Florence’s first cousins. Mary Ann was the sister of John Hywel Davies who, with his wife Phyllis, had taken over Plas Isaf in the early 1920s. The family are still there today. John Hywel and Mary Ann were the children of Evan and Sarah Davies of Penparciau farm and, from c1919, Pen-y-coed.

[16] Vera and Dylan: their two families were connected by several marriages. See https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandtheedgeoflove/

Theodosia and David Rees: South Wales Daily Post, September 3 1897.

Annie Fernhill and John Williams, her uncle: John, the eldest son of Thomas and Anne Williams of Waunfwlchan farm, was Anne’s witness at her wedding to Jim in 1893, and then moved out of Tirbach to farm Pen-y-coed until at least 1911. He died at Fernhill in 1918; he made Annie his sole executor and beneficiary. He left a gross estate of £240 (£9,899 in today’s terms), £15 net (£721).

Daniel Williams: he died in April 1913 at Fernhill. He had also been previously nursed by Anne Williams, Rose Cottage. Daniel and John farmed Pen-y-coed and worked together in the breeding of horses. See Daniel’s obituary in the Carmarthen Journal, April 11 1913.

[17] Dylan’s great-great-great grandparents: Theodosia and William Robert(s) of Maesgwyn and John and Jane/Jennet Williams of Graig farm. See Note 15 above and Family trees for the Lloyd and Williams families on this site.

Heulwen: she was born March 5 1934, the daughter of Thomas Williams and Mary Ann Davies of Llwyngwyn. Thomas was Florence’s first cousin, so Heulwen and Dylan were second cousins. Thomas Williams was a grandson of Waunfwlchan – see first Note 15 above and then Thomas (2003) chapter 1 for the Waunfwlchan family details and see the Dylan's peninsula family tree (in full blossom) page on this site to examine how the family can be traced back to the mid-to-late 1700s.

[18] Caitlin on aunts: see Caitlin Thomas 1986, p50.

Florence’s relations speaking Welsh: see the census returns for the family farms for 1891-1911; some didn’t learn English until their teens. For example, Mary Ann Davies who married Florence’s first cousin, Thomas Williams of Llwyngwyn, spoke only Welsh when she was 12 (1911 census), as did her four siblings. Colin Edwards interviewed her in the 1960s, and the tape reveals that she was less than comfortable speaking English even then. When John Brinnin, Dylan’s agent, visited Llwyngwyn in 1953, Thomas Williams took him on a tour of the farm but Brinnin “could not understand a word of our guide’s English”. (Brinnin, 1955)

We need to be cautious about people from this part of Carmarthenshire claiming in the 1891-1911 cenuses that they spoke both Welsh and English because their English might have been very rudimentary. For example, Florence’s uncle, John Williams the eldest son of Waunfwlchan, said in the 1891 census at the age of 55 that he spoke only Welsh, but by 1901 he said he spoke both languages.

1921 census: the civil parishes of Llangain, Llangynog and Llansteffan (which includes Llanybri) form most of the peninsula; Llangain and Llangynog parishes reach up to the main line railway and the A40. The three parishes include virtually all of the Williams family farms, as well as those of their close relatives. Fernhill stands on the boundary of Llangynog and Llangain parishes, the two with the highest proportion of Welsh speakers in 1921 and 1931. The proportion of Welsh speakers in the three parishes increased from 87% in 1921 to 90% in 1931.

Source: Census of England and Wales 1921 for the County of Carmarthen (1924) Table 25a p40, and 1931, Table 18 p42.

crying aloud in Welsh: letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson, late October 1933, in The Collected Letters, (2000).

[19] Smyrna, Llangain, and speaking Welsh etc: see the interviews with William Phillips and Tudor Price at CE/NLW and also in Thomas (2003) p52. See also p209 on Dylan learning to swear in Welsh in the stables of a family farm near Llangain.

[20] Llansteffan aunt: Florence’s half-sister, Anne, on whom see https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandtheedgeoflove/ , especially Note xxii.

Dylan holidayed with his parents at Anne’s home in Rose Cottage, Llansteffan, from about 1919 to her move to Ferryside, sometime before her death in 1922. For more on these holidays, in which excursions were made to Fernhill, see the Ocky Owen interview at CE/NLW and in Thomas (2003), who gives the time spent at Rose Cottage as three weeks to a month. See as well the interview with Anne’s daughter, Doris Fulleylove. Anne’s second husband, Robert, was a cousin; he was the grandson of Daniel Williams of Waunffort, who was a brother of Thomas Williams of Waunfwlchan, Florence and Anne’s grandfather. Between c1922 and c1929, Dylan’s visits were to Fernhill. On these stays with aunts, see also the Edwards interview with Rose Walters Roberts: "When he [Dylan’s father] put his foot down, they went to stay with aunts... and, of course, Dylan used to disappear every holidays...I don't know about the parents staying, but I think the uncles would come up and collect them, and take them down. I don't think Mr and Mrs Thomas went down there to stay very much... " (CE/NLW). Levi Evans also describes the young Dylan being left at Llangain whilst his mother returned to Swansea (a written note in CE/NLW).

without children of their own: the first cousins at Llwyngwyn were the children of Florence’s mother’s brother, Evan Williams. See Thomas (2003) p182 for their names etc. , including Sarah who had moved out of Llwyngwyn to Maesgwyn on her marriage.

true childhood: letter to Henry Treece, June 16 1938, from Gosport Street, Laugharne. Referring to The Peaches, he writes that “Last week I finished a long story about my true childhood….”

[21] Fernhill was home: “the farm was home”, second stanza of Fern Hill.

[22] Family everywhere: for details on Thomas Thomas, Billy Thomas, Henry Jones and Harry Jones, see the Dylan's peninsula family tree (in full blossom) page on this site. In 1938, Daniel Evans married Olwen Davies, the sister of Mary Ann Williams of Llwyngwyn, who had married Florence’s first cousin, Thomas Williams, in 1929. See Note 15 above and family tree above. Elizabeth (1877-1953) and Jane Bowen (1879-) of Bryn Arlais, Llansteffan, were milliners. They were first cousins to Jim Jones Fernhill – for more on them, see Note 39 below under Penyclun. They were present at Annie Jones’ funeral in 1933.

named after Florence: Mary Phillips, granddaughter of Thomas and Catherine of the Edwinsford told me that her grandparents had named their second child, Florrie, after “auntie Florrie Swansea”. See Thomas (2003) p301, note 119. She is named as Florrie Thomas, aged three, on the 1911 census for the Castle Inn, Llansteffan, which her parents ran before moving to the Edwinsford. Catherine was the same age as Florence and had been born and brought up in the Rhondda, whilst Thomas was a Llangynog man.

[23] Friendship with the Harries family: Tom Harries’ wife, Sarah, and Florence were especially close. For more, see Thomas (2003) chapter 6, based on interviews with Mair Lewis nee Harries, daughter of Pilroath. It was Mair who helped Florence move to Laugharne; she was also the one who looked after Llewelyn (and sometimes Aeronwy). The two families were later joined by a marriage, in 1960, when Connie, the daughter of John Hywel Davies of Plas Isaf, Llanybri, married Henry Harries, a son of Pilroath. John Hywel was brother of Mary Ann Williams of Llwyngwyn.

[24] Rees Davies, b.1881: his father, Benjamin, lived at Bryn (next door to Fernhill) and Creigiau-bach (almost opposite Fernhill), whilst his grandfather, Rees, was at Pantyddwr Graig (1871, together with Benjamin) and earlier at “’Iet”, Llangynog (1841). This farm was Moelfre Iet or Moelfre Gate, just north of the Williams farm, Pen-y-coed. Davies was in his eighties when Colin Edwards interviewed him. He shows a better understanding of the Williams family than some of the Williamses who were interviewed by Edwards.

Pencelli-uchaf: Florence’s first cousin, Anne Williams b.1879 of Llwyngwyn, had married William Evans of this farm; his parents had farmed it from the 1870s. Anne and William were here until their deaths in 1951.

[25] Delivering meat: Thomas Thomas at the Edwinsford was a butcher and publican, and ran a slaughterhouse in Llansteffan. His daughters, Florrie and Elizabeth Anne, took the pony and trap around the farms in the 1930s. Two grocers called at least once a week, who also sold paraffin for lamps. Local man, Alf Howells of Danlanfach farm, was a mobile ironmonger. There were also less frequent traders from Carmarthen, including a draper, Alfred Davies, who was related to local families.

[26] Sarah Evans, Farmers’ Arms: CE/NLW.

[27] Data on Williams acreage in 1914 etc: from the 1910 Duties on Land Values Survey and census returns. The “Williamses and their close relatives” are defined as the descendents of Florence’s great-grandparents, John and Hannah Williams of Pen-y-coed farm and Evan and Anne Harries of Plas Isaf farm – see part of their family tree in Note 15 above with fuller details at the Dylan's peninsula family tree (in full blossom) page on this site.The thousand acres referred to comprises the following farms: Fernhill, Pencelli-uchaf, Llwyngwyn, Maesgwyn, Pen-y-coed, Laques-newydd, Pentowyn, Mwche, Down, Llettyrneuadd and Meini. All were farmed by the Williamses and their close relatives throughout Dylan’s lifetime. For more on the family farms, see Thomas (2003) chapter 2. For data on Jim Jones’ family’s farms, see Note 39 below.

clout: Florence's sister – a half-sister - was Anne Gwyn nee Williams of Waunfwlchan, Plas Uchaf, Llanybri, and Rose Cottage, Llansteffan (January 1866-1922). See https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandtheedgeoflove/ , especially Note xxii. Anne and her children were at Rose Cottage in 1911, and she and her second husband, Robert Williams, were there on the Register of Electors for 1918 and 1919. At some later point, Anne moved to Forest House, Brigstocke Tce., Ferryside, where she wrote her Will; she died there in May 1922.

In late 1891, Anne married John Gwyn (1868-1893) , having previously had a daughter, Gladys (1885-1893), father unknown. The suggestion in Stanford-ffoulkes (2004) that the fourteeen-year old Anne had been previously bethrothed to, and was pregnant by, John's father, W.E.B. Gwyn, (1827-1880), described by Stanford-ffoulkes as a widower, is unfounded, not least because W.E.B. Gwyn pre-deceased his wife by many years (she died in 1918). The further suggestion that Anne began her relationship with John Gwyn after his father's death in January 1880 is implausible, not least because John, aged thirteen, was away at school in Radnorshire (1881 census). Standford-ffoulkes also suggests that Gladys was the daughter of Annie Jones Fernhill. Gladys' death certificate states that her mother is Anne Gwyn of Plas Uchaf, Llanybri.

The Gwyns are usually described as being one of the oldest gentry families in Carmarthenshire, having previously lived at Pilroath mansion. W. E. B. Gwyn was a Justice of the Peace; he and his sons were prominent in Carmarthen public life, as well as in a number of agricultural, hunting, coursing, breeding and riding activities. The Gwyn lineage, arms, crest etc can be found in Thomas Nicholas' Annals and Antiquities of the Counties and County Families of Wales.

shared interest in horses: John and Daniel Williams ("Dr Dan") of Waunfwlchan were Anne's (and Florence's) uncles. John and Dan were well known for their breeding and showing of horses, particularly hunters. See Dan's obituary in the Carmarthen Journal April 11 1913. W.E.B. Gwyn was a highly respected breeder of hunters and founded, and helped to run, the United Counties Hunters Society - see numerous press reports in the Carmarthenshire newspapers and especially The Welshman, September 27 1878.

other social contacts: For example, John Gwyn drinking in the Union Hall pub in Llansteffan with Anne's uncle, Daniel Williams of Waunfwlchan - see Carmarthen Journal August 29 1890. Together with the vicar of Llanybri and the curate of Llangain, Daniel and John Gwyn, as well as John's brother Frank, were at a celebratory dinner in the Union Hall in February 1890 - see Carmarthen Journal, February 28 1890. (Both events prior to the marriage of John and Anne in 1891.)

Thomas Williams, Capel Newydd etc: A transcript of a register of members of Capel Newydd 1863-82, Ref No CNC/122, Carmarthen Archives. And see Note (ix) of the above online article. Board of Guardians: South Wales Daily News, April 1 1876.

owned another property: Thomas Williams’ Will mentions his freehold property in Llangynog; the writing is not clear but it looks like “Moelfre Hill.” There is a farm outside Llangynog called Moelfre, next to Moelfre Wood, and a hill called Pen-y-Moelfre. “Moelfre Hill” was rented out to a David Thomas, who we believe is the landlord of the Plough and Harrow in Llangyngog; David was a nephew of Thomas’ wife, Anne ie the son of her brother, Thomas Thomas (previously Thomas Harries).

[28] Farmhouses etc: the data on bedrooms is taken from the 1945 Rural Housing Inspection Report.

data on Mwche: from the 1891 sales details.

[29] Data on servants: census returns. Four servants at Maesgwyn: 1911 census. The servants at Pentowyn in 1901were a cook, a domestic servant and three farm workers: see the table below.

only three other dedicated cooks on the whole peninsula: as at the 1901 census, in the parishes of Llansteffan (which includes Llanybri), Llangain and Llangynog. They were at (1) Plas Llansteffan, whose household servants comprised a cook, kitchen maid, parlour maid, two housemaids and a gardener. (2) Coomb mansion: a cook, kitchen maid, two housemaids, a laundress, a general servant and a footman. (2) St Anthony’s Cottage, a fine house overlooking Scott’s Bay, Llansteffan: a cook, housemaid and nurse.

grandeur catching: Polly was a music teacher in the 1891 census and an assistant housekeeper in 1911.

[30] Jim was too much of a gentleman: Mary Ann Williams, Llwyngwyn. Also, Gwilym Ivor Evans Brook Forge, Llangain: “Gentleman farmer, you could say. Get somebody else to do the work, probably.” Both CE/NLW. Several other interviewees mention that Jim was “big in his ways”; “he liked everyone to think that he was Gentleman Jim….he wanted to cut a dash always…” See Thomas (2003) pp52 and 213 for more: "Big in his ways - no work in him - left Fernhill farm to ruins - they were in a poor way - received £1 a week compensation - but there was nothing wrong with him."

Gwilym Evans also mentioned that Jim and Annie’s son, Idris, “had the same old thing…swagger”, dropping his Welsh, and putting on an accent to lord it over the locals: “I live in a mansion,” he once told a friend. “You live in a blacksmith’s shop.” CE/NLW.

Rural Dean and vicar of Llangain: Rev. Evan Jones. In February 1903, he married Elizabeth Morris of Llwyn farm, Llangain, a first cousin to Jim Jones on his father’s side, and a second cousin on his mother’s side. See under Penhen/Llwyn in Note 39 below for more details. He was vicar of Llangain from 1900 to his death in 1934, and Rural Dean from 1931. He was a member of the Governing Body of the Church in Wales 1921-1923 and 1933-35, as well as Diocesan Inspector of Schools. He was, too, a Commissioner of Income Tax. He served as a Carmarthen rural district councillor from 1919 to 1930. He was a regular contributor to The Welshman. For more on Jones’ career and work in Llangain, see Williams (2007) pp47-48.

uncle a church warden: this was James Jones of Penyclun (1850-1914). See his obituary, The Carmarthen Journal, December 25 1914.

hand in hand with the Gwyns: Carmarthen Journal reports eg October 29 1909.

Idris, swagger etc: local man Gwilym Evans, CE/NLW.

[31] Cancer in schoolboy, fragility of life etc.: see Dylan to Percy Smart, December 1930: “Even that third-former, who is running along the corridor, has probably an inherent cancer, or a mind full of lechery. The child grows from the cradle, soaked in a morbidity and restlessness he cannot understand, does a little painful loving, fails to make money, builds his life on sand, and is struck down before he can accomplish anything.”

[32] just two years into married life: Anne’s daughter, Gladys died in March 1893 of tubercular peritonitis and meningitis, and Anne’s first husband, John Gwyn, died in June 1893 of acute nephritis. Anne’ first son, Thomas Gwyn, died of TB in April 1916; her second son, William Williams, drowned on August 3 1917; her mother, Amy, had died on July 30 1917. Anne herself died of cancer of the uterus (death certificate)

[33] Journeys to family funerals: Florence’s cousin was Anna Williams, Llwyngwyn, who died in May 1925, age 43.

death of Ferryside cousin: David Howell, son of John and Irene Howell, died March quarter 1934. It is said that Dylan and Florence attended the funeral but I have no confirmation of this.

killed herself: Annie Thomas of Llwynbrain farm, Banc-y-felin. She was Florence’s cousin-in-law, wife of William Thomas, grandson of Sarah and William Thomas of Pen-y-coed. Llwynbrain was earlier farmed by Sarah’s lovechild, Jane Harries, before she moved to Dishley Court, Leominster (see Thomas 2003, p288). Heulwen Morris of Llwyngwyn eventually inherited Llwynbrain.

[34] Funeral of teacher: Dylan to Percy Smart, c. December 12 1932.

death of Annie Fernhill: her death certificate says that she died on February 7 1933 at Mount Pleasant, Llansteffan, the cottage to which she and Jim moved c1929 from Fernhill. The certificate lists the causes of death as (1) a.Cardiac failure b. Myocardial degeneration (2) Prolapse of uterus. Dylan’s letter of 8 February 1933 to Trevor Hughes describes Annie dying of cancer of the womb in Carmarthen Infirmary. For more on Annie's funeral, see my essay at

https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/dylan-and-his-aunties-a-portrait-of-the-poet-as-an-only-child

mother’s still-born child: born sometime after her marriage in 1903 and before the birth of Nancy in 1906. For more, see Ferris, 1999 ch.1 and, with a good deal more helpful information, Williams (2012).

[35] Annie Jones: she was born in 1862 at Llwynhelig, Morfa Bach. She married James “Jim” Jones in 1893, and had one child, Idris. They lived at Tirbach, Pentowyn, Fernhill and Mount Pleasant, where she died. (Mount Pleasant is at the start of the track leading to Llwyngwyn, and opposite the entrance to Waunfwlchan.)

Jim was deep Llangain: Jim Jones had been been born in 1865 to Richard and Rachel Jones (nee Morris), and brought up in Pentrewyman farm, a few fields south of Fernhill. Richard had married Rachel Morris (1839-1874) on August 12 1862. She was daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Morris of Clomendy farm, Llangain.

third generation on his father’s side: Jim’s father, Richard, had been born in 1839, and brought up on Penyclun farm, Llangain, next to the Tywi estuary. Richard’s own father, James Jones, had been farming Penyclun from at least 1851, but had farmed in Llangain from the 1830s, though he had not been born there or on the peninsula.

fifth generation on his mother’s side: Jim’s mother, Rachel, had been born and brought up at Clomendy, just a few fields south from Penyclun. Her father, Richard Morris, had succeeded his father and grandfather at Clomendy. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a granddaughter of Penhen farm. See the following family tree in which the two Elizabeths are the same person:

counted landed gentry amongst friends: in his Will of 1871, Jim’s grandfather, Richard Morris of Clomendy, made William Edward Bevan Gwyn of Plas Cwrthir, Llangain, an executor, and a guardian of his daughter, Eliza. It was Bevan Gwyn’s son, John, who would marry Florence’s half-sister, Anne, in 1891.

founding publisher of The Welshman: John Lewis Brigstocke (1805-1865) of Carmarthen founded the paper in 1832 and published it until 1842. On September 8 1832, he married Margaret Thomas of Green Castle, Llangain who, according to Alcwyn Evans’ pedigree for the Thomas and Morris families, was a first cousin to Jim Jones’ grandmother, Elizabeth Morris of Clomendy, Llangain. See the Morris pedigree on page Pedigree of the Morris family on this site. Marriage data from FMD parish records; one of the witnesses was Griffith Thomas, Margaret’s brother.

Annie’s funeral: The Welshman and the Carmarthen Journal, February 17 1933. You can find the report in The Welshman at https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/mourners-and-bearers-funeral-reports

[36] Relay of bearers: this was a tradition which survived in and around Llanybri until about the 1970s.

a good woman: Rees Davies, CE/NLW. Others on her kindness etc: notes made by Brinley Edwards for his son, Colin, at CE/NLW.

poetry quotation: from After the Funeral.

parched worlds of Wales: Parchedig is the Welsh word for Reverend, and is often abbreviated to parch or parchs.

Bydd myrdd o rhyfeddodau: composed by Dafydd George Jones (1780-1879), who lived on the banks of the Tywi, near Capel Dewi, just outside Carmarthen.

[37] Mrs G. B. Evans: she is listed in the funeral report. Further information on Mrs Evans nee Anne Harries came from Alun Davies Llansteffan, emails December 2012. She was the sister of Tom Llewelyn Harries of Pilroath. Her chauffeur was Freddie Thomas of Dyffryn Tawel. Her husband, Griffith Barrett Evans, was a third cousin once removed to Lady Kylsant, whose great-great grandfather, David Morris, had founded Carmarthen bank. For more on this, see Note 41 below.

his Lordship in jail: Lord Kylsant had been sentenced to twelve months for fraud. He was released from Wormwood Scrubs in August 1932, and died at Coomb in 1937. For more on the Kylsants, see Note 41 below.

[38] Miss Lloyd, Plas Llwynddu: listed in the funeral report. It’s not clear whether it was Mary or Margaretta Lloyd. They and their half-brother, David Lloyd-Davies, were first cousins to Jim Jones Fernhill – see the family tree in the next Note below. David’s parents, William and Margaret Davies, had acquired Redcourt and Llwynddu in 1926, and moved to Llwynddu from Clyn-mawr. They lived there until their deaths in 1932 and 1936. David and Margaret Lloyd-Davies farmed Redcourt, another “gentleman’s residence”, until the early 1950s, when they moved into Llwynddu (I’m grateful to Haydn Williams, Llangain, for this information).

Miss Lloyd also related to Annie: the two sisters, Mary and Margretta Lloyd, were second cousins to Hannah Williams of Waunfwlchan farm, Annie Fernhill’s (and Florence’s) mother. See Family trees for the Lloyd and Williams families on this site.

Dylan to Nancy: it’s the first letter in the second edition of The Collected Letters (2000), written in or about 1926, just after Dylan had started at grammar school, and the year in which William and Margaret Davies, had acquired Redcourt and Llwynddu.

[39] Estuary famers not gentry: the family tree and following details are for Jim Jones’ aunts, uncles and first cousins who farmed the land between Llwynddu and the Tywi: Penyclun (106 acres), Clyn-mawr/Clunmawr (60 acres), Llwyn (72 acres), Penhen (250 acres), Clomendy (178 acres), Church House, Llangain Mill, and Llwynddu itself (41 acres).

During Dylan’s childhood and teenage years, the core was Clyn-mawr, Llwyn, Penhen, Church House and, after 1926, Llwynddu. Together with Jones farms not on the estuary, such as Pentrewyman (110 acres), Pwntan-bach (14 acres) and, between 1919 and 1930, Dolaumeinion (111 acres), this amounts to some 650 acres (Clomendy and Penyclun are excluded because they went out of Jim Jones’ family in the 1870s and 1918 respectively). Please see the following family tree:

Yellow = first cousins Elizabeth = same person Green Jane = Jane Davies, the daughter of T. Davies of Nantyrhebog, Llangynog. Jones (1970) describes Nantyrhebog as a mansion and “home of the ancient stock of Protheroe” in Tudor times. By the 1800s, it was a major farm of some 250 acres (1881). There was another Morris link to Nantyrhebog: when Thomas Morris of Clomendy made his Will in 1790, one of those he entrusted with making an inventory of his possesions was David Thomas of Nantyrhebog.

[40] financially astute, interests in Llangain farms: the relevant Wills that describe the bequeathing of leasehold interests, and the rental from them, in various Llangain farms within the family of Rachel Morris, Jim Jones’ mother, follow below. Enterprising farmers would take out leaseholds on other properties for a fixed term such as 21 years or for “three lives”, and then rent these farms, or part of their land, to other farmers, passing on the leasehold to their heirs at their death.

on her father’s side, Rachel’s great-grandfather Thomas Morris of Clomendy, whose Will of 1790 is at http://hdl.handle.net/10107/447332 bequeathing the leaseholds of Llwynddu, Llwyn, Gilfach, Pencelli, Creigiau-bach and Pwllymarch; her grandfather Richard Morris (1762-1834) of Clomendy, whose Will of 1834 is at http://hdl.handle.net/10107/435295 bequeathing interests in Dan-y-lan, Llangain Mill (to his son Griffith), Pentrewyman (to his son Thomas), as well as “houses and premises” in Dame Street, Carmarthen.

See also the 1788 Will of Thomas Morris, the son of the above Thomas Morris, re the bequeathing of interests in Llwynddu and Llwyn http://hdl.handle.net/10107/984604. The Wills are at NLW.

on her mother’s side, Rachel’s great-grandfather, William David Morris (died 1785) leased Penhen from 1767. His Will of 1783 is at http://hdl.handle.net/10107/98277 and see also Llettypenhen, Llangain Deeds (Bludworth Papers GB 0211) DD68/1 at Carmarthenshire Archives. Rachel’s grandfather, William Morris (b.1771), inherited the lease and then, significantly, took ownership of Penhen at or around the time of his marriage to Sarah Thomas of Greencastle in June 1808. William’s personal estate at the time of the marriage was valued at £700. In his Will of 1846, William Morris (b.1771) bequeathed his interests in the following Llangain farms to his sons: Werncorgam Fawr (William b.1809), Ystradwalter (George) and Old Castle (David), as well as a house in Johnstown. His daughters, Elizabeth and Catherine, are also mentioned. The Will is at http://hdl.handle.net/10107/856068 . William b.1809 was at Werncorgam Fawr in 1841 and 1851 with his wife Joyce and children; by 1861 they had moved to Llwyn, and were there in 1871. By 1881, their son, William b.1847, was farming Llwyn, together with his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of James and Ann Jones of Penyclun.

[41] David Morris, banker of Carmarthen: David Morris (1746-1805) was the son of David and Sarah Morris of Ferry, who were farmers. Baker-Jones’ (1970), who provides an extensive description of Morris and his descendents, notes that “the family had lived for many generations in the parish of Llanstephan…” Ferry is on the estuary, south of the Morris farm at Clomendy, and just north of Llansteffan. David Morris Snr’s 1764 Will is at http://hdl.handle.net/10107/198216 ; he makes bequests to his son, David, and daughter, Mary, who married David Barrett, and they followed at Ferry.

David Morris Jnr married Jane Harry in June 1766. They moved to Carmarthen and went into retail and then, by 1787, banking. He died in 1805 and was succeeded at the bank by his son, Thomas (1768-1839), who made a good marriage to Maria Thornton, who seems to have been the natural daughter of Edward Law (1750-1818), Baron Ellenborough and Lord Chief Justice. Thomas was then followed at the bank by his two sons, William Morris (1812-1877) and Thomas Charles Morris (1808-1886), who expanded the business and became wealthy, buying much property. William inherited Coomb mansion, Llangynog, in 1864, and was followed there by his son Thomas (1850-1894) and his wife Alice. The mansion then went to Thomas and Alice’s daughter, Mai Alice Magdalen Morris b.1878, who married the shipping magnate, Owen Cosby Phillips, first and last Baron Kylsant. Mai Alice Morris, Lady Kyslant, was the great-great granddaughter of David Morris Jnr, the founding banker. She sold Coomb in 1941. For more on the this line of Morrises and their roles in public life, such as Member of Parliament, Justice of the Peace, Deputy Lieutenant, High Sheriff etc, see Baker-Jones (1970). The bank was eventually taken over by National Provincial between 1864 and 1871.

Were the Morrises of Clomendy and Penhen related to Morris the bankers?: if these families were related, making Jim Jones Fernhill a distant cousin of Lady Kyslant, then the connections would have been made in the late 1600s or early 1700s ie before the birth of David Morris the banker in 1746. It is possible that the founding mansion was Pantyathro, also on the estuary and in marrying distance of Penhen, Clomendy and Ferry farms. Pantyrathro may have been the Morris breeding box, to use Dylan’s phrase, whose children and grandchildren spread out to marry into other farms. Morrises had been at Pantyrathro from at least 1654 until the early 1800s.

Baker-Jones (1970) notes that there was a “family tradition” that the Morris family at Pantyrathro were related to the Morris family at Ferry. We find references in Wills that do establish links between the various Morrises but they are not evidence of a family relationship. For example, in his Will of 1772, Thomas Morris of Pantyrathro, a Carmarthen merchant, made a bequest to David Morris of Ferry. In his 1834 Will, Richard Morris of Clomendy makes Griffiths Barrett of Ferry (1785-1847), who was a first cousin to the banking Morrises, a trustee and guardian of his children’s interests. There are also family stories about the Penhen Morrises and the banking Morrises at Coomb being related – see Note 12 above.

But, for now, we cannot find a family relationship between the Morrises of Penhen and Clomendy (and their descendents at Pentrewyman and Fernhill) and the banking Morrises; so they must lie side by side in the following tree as two separate families:

In 1819, Griffiths Barrett married Hannah Williams b.1796, daughter of Abel Williams of Pencelli -uchaf, Llangynog. They are beneficiaries in Williams’ 1831 Will at http://hdl.handle.net/10107/434017. Griffiths Barrett’s grandson, Griffith Barrett Evans, married Anne Harries of Pilroath in 1901. There were no children. The Glyn is just across the main road from Blaencwm.

[42] Rural district councillors: Rev Evan Jones, the Llangain vicar, served from 1919 to 1930, followed by John Lewis of Meini (see below).

Chairmen of the parish council: Jim Jones’ uncle, James Jones of Penyclun farm, had been chair in 1899-1900, whilst three cousins of Jim’s mother, Rachel, had also been chair: William Morris of Llwyn 1898-99, James Morris of Penhen 1904-1905 and David Morris of Church House 1906-1907. Jim’s half-brother, David Jones of Dolaumeinion was chair from 1927 to 1929. Parish chairmen present at the funeral were Thomas Davies of Clomendy 1932-1934, and his predecessor for seven previous but not sequential years, David Evans of Gilfach. John Lewis of Meini had been chairman 1913-1915 and then from 1937 to 1946. Data taken from Haydn Williams (2007) and Thomas (2003, p208).

Robert Phillips in public life: Carmarthen Journal Oct 17 1913, Sept. 13 1918, Feb. 7 1919, May 2 1919.

John Francis on councils: see, for example, The Carmarthen Journal March 18 1904, The Welshman March 11 1910, Carmarthen Journal March 25 1910.

John Lewis: rural district councillor from 1931-1951. John was born in 1883, the son of Anne (b.1843) and John Lewis (b. 1839), an outfitter and draper in Lammas Street, Carmarthen (see the 1881, 1891 returns), whose parents, David and Anna Lewis, had farmed Meini, Llangain, from at least 1851. Anne was the daughter of David and Margaret Francis nee Harries aka Thomas of Dolaumeinion, Llangain, and sister of Sarah Lewis of Lletyrneuadd, on whom see below in this note and Thomas 2003, p294. John Lewis Senior and Anne Francis married on November 18 1865.

John Junior (b.1883) married Anne Lewis nee Davies (b.1869) of Penparciau, Llangynog, who had previously married his older brother, David Lewis, in March 1894. The widowed Anne was with John at Trerhos farm, Llandilo Abercowin, in 1901.

John and Anne then farmed Clomendy on the estuary from at least 1911 to 1915. Within a couple of years, they were farming Meini, a few fields south of Fernhill. They are described as cousins of the Williamses in the 1933 funeral report of Annie Jones Fernhill. The relationship is more complex: as the family tree below indicates, John was the grandson of Margaret Francis nee Harries aka Thomas of Dolaumeinion, sister of Anne Williams nee Harries aka Thomas of Waunfwlchan; both Margaret and Anne were children of Evan and Anne Harries of Plas Isaf, Llanybri. Thus John's mother, Anne Francis, was a first cousin to the Waunfwlchan children, including Evan Williams of Llwyngwyn and his sister, Hannah Williams, mother of Annie Fernhill and Dylan’s mother, Florence. John himself was therefore a second cousin to Annie Fernhill and Florence, as well as to Evan Llwyngwyn’s children, including Heulwen’s father, Thomas Williams at Llwyngwyn and Thomas’ sister, Sarah, at Maesgwyn. For more on this, and why some of the children of Evan and Anne Harries of Plas Isaf, changed their surname to Thomas, please go to the Dylan's peninsula family tree (in full blossom) page on this site.

But John was also related to the Williamses through his wife, Anne, who was herself the niece of Margaret Francis nee Harries of Dolaumeinion. Anne Lewis was, in turn, the aunt of Mary Ann Davies of Pen-y-coed, who married Thomas Williams of Llwyngwyn in 1929, making John their uncle.

Green = siblings Yellow = first cousins John/John Lewis = same person

[43] county councillor: T. Ll. Harries was followed in 1953 by John Hywel Davies of Plas Isaf, Llanybri, the brother of Mary Ann Williams of Llwyngwyn, Heulwen’s mother. See also Note 23 on the marriage between the two families.

Isaac Evans: shown as a district councillor at the funeral in 1939 of Dylan’s uncle, Rev. David Rees. Isaac’s son, Dewi, told me that the Evanses at Glogue had always been very friendly with the Williamses.

William Thomas: of Shop Newydd, just across the main road from Blaencwm. See Williams (2007, chapter 5) and the 1911 census return for Shop Newydd, which had been in his wife’s family for over ninety years. He had been clerk of the council since 1897. He had been a deacon at Smyrna since 1902 and chapel secretary from 1930. The two Williams family members who were deacons at Smyrna were, from 1926, Williams Evans of Pencelli-uchaf, husband of Annie and Florence’s first cousin, Anne Williams of Llwyngwyn; and Henry Jones, the Llangain postmaster, also from 1926. (On Jones’ relationship to the Williamses, see Note 22 above). All three were bearers at the funeral of Dylan’s uncle, Rev. David Rees, in 1939, and described as deacons, as was Rees himself. They are also in the 1940 group photo of deacons on p59 of Williams (2007).

[44] Unpossessed peasantry: letter to Oscar Williams, July 30 1945.

left farms for the east: one of those who did leave was William Proper Williams, who established a settlement of Williamses in Pontardulais. He was the son of Daniel Williams of Waunffort, and also a nephew of Thomas Williams of Waunfwlchan, as well as a first cousin once removed to Dylan’s mother, Florence. For more on Dylan’s relations in Pontardulais see John and Thomas (2010)

John Bowen Lloyd, Tenafly, JP Morgan etc: John Lloyd was the son of William and Margaret Lloyd of Glogue farm, Llangynog, just along the lane from Fernhill. The Lloyds and the Williamses were closely related - see the Lloyd and Williams family tree on a separate page on this site. John and Mary Lloyd (nee Bowen) first farmed 122 acres, Drenoeth (?), Trelech, before emigrating to America in 1888. They had two sons, John, who died in 1901, and William. Aged 46, John Snr is a farm labourer on the US 1900 census, and his sons are book-keepers. John and Mary returned c1910 to Llansteffan. He died in 1930 and she in 1936. They are buried in a imposing tomb in Capel Newydd, Llanybri, amongst the other Lloyd and Williams graves. As for working for JP Morgan, a check in the Morgan archives at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York brought the following response from the curator: "Pierpont Morgan definitely did not have a place in Tenafly. I'm not aware of any members of the immediate family who did." As for bees, robins and blackbirds, John Lloyd Snr had a reputation in Llansteffan for telling tall stories, and this was one of them, noted by local historian, Louie Davies.

[45] Cigarette packets: Thomas (2003) p254.

[46] Life at Blaencwm, visits etc: see Thomas (2003) chapter 6.

meetings with writers in Llanybri: “…it was about three or four authors, they were coming very often to see Dylan… there was a good many of those coming down with him very often there…Keidrych Rhys was with him sometimes in there…” Sarah Evans, Farmers’ Arms (CE/NLW).

back in the heartland: Florence’s first cousins were at Maesgwyn, Llwyngwyn and Pencelli-uchaf, with first cousins once removed at Pentowyn and Mwche, and second cousins at Pentrewyman, Llettyrneuadd, Meini, Laques-newydd, Down and Trehyrne. The cousins- in-law were the siblings of Mary Ann Williams of Llwyngwyn. They were at Pen-y-coed, Plas Isaf and Llwynon (both at Llanybri), Ffald (Llangynog) and Brook Forge near Blaencwm.

new tenants: the new tenants at Fernhill and Pentrewyman were Tom and Doris Williams, and William and Margaret Jones respectively. Doris and Margaret were second cousins to Florence. On Doris, see the family tree in Note 42 above; for Margaret, see the family tree in Note 8 above.

felt at home: Aeronwy Thomas (2009) p50.

[47] Aunt Rachel: auntie Rach in The Peaches. She was the sister of Jim Jones Fernhill. See Note 39 above under Penyclun. In the 1891 census, she, her ten siblings and both parents are described as speaking only Welsh, though by 1901 they were down as speaking both languages.

Dylan at Pentrewyman constantly: Tudor Price and William Phillips, CE/NLW, and at p48 in Thomas (2003). Tudor and William came in the summers from Swansea to The Factory, a woollen mill and smallholding next to Pentrewyman: “We only went at certain times of the year, and Dylan was going there constantly, because his aunt Rachel was there…”

Servant girl: this was May Bowen nee Edwards, interview at CE/NLW and in Thomas (2003). See also the interview with William Phillips and Tudor Price on Dylan at Fernhill and Pentrewyman, also in Thomas (2003). On Dylan riding Prince the cart horse, see these interviews and that with Watt Davies, Rachel’s farm hand. On Rachel working hard on the farm, see the interviews with May Bowen. William Phillips and Tudor Price, from whom the quote about Rachel is taken.

[48] The Factory etc: see Note 47 above.

gorse, reeds and ferns at Fernhill: William Phillips and Tudor Price, CE/NLW and in Thomas (2003) pp50-51. Rees Davies of Creigiau-bach, across the road from Fernhill, described its land as very poor and very wet (CE/NLW). Add in the apple orchards and the fir trees, then only a limited part of Fernhill’s land would have been productive enough for hay for Jim Jones’ ten cows and two horses. Fernhill was aptly named; Dylan called the farm Gorsehill in The Peaches, and that fitted just as well. The extent of the fern and gorse land at Fernhill is very evident from the OS 3^rd edition map, 1920-1932, which you can view at http://www.peoplescollectionwales.co.uk/Places

On Fernhill’s hay, cows and horses, see the Walt Davies interview, CE/NLW. Walt was the farmhand at Pentrewyman, and then farmed Ystradwalter. He was on Llangain parish council in the 1930s. He estimated that Fernhill was twenty acres; the 1910 land tax survey noted it as fifteen. In 1917, Annie claimed it was 30 acres - Carmarthen Journal, April 6 1917.

dark and dismal: see the interview with Tudor Price at CE/NLW and in Thomas (2003) p51.

gay and easy-going Pentrewyman: see the interview with Phillips and Price in Thomas (2003). Like Dylan, they played and ate there from early morning to nightfall.

Pentrewyman fields of hay and corn: May Bowen interview and see, too, William Phillips, who was asked what they harvested at Pentrewyman: “ Hay mainly…but there was a certain amount of corn… Pentrewyman used to always have top fields in corn.” Both CE/NLW and Thomas (2003).

[49] Childless land: last stanza of Fern Hill.

family births: the relations are as those who lived in Fernhill, Llwyngwyn, Maesgwyn, Pencelli-uchaf, Pentrewyman, as well as Florence’s half-sister, Anne, who lived in Llansteffan. It was Anne’s daughter, Doris, who was the last child to be born (January 1902). Evan and Sarah Davies, who had replaced Florence’s uncles at Pen-y-Coed, had a boy three years older than Dylan but they did not become part of the family until 1929 when their daughter Mary Ann married Thomas Williams of Llwyngwyn – see Thomas 2003 p202. For more detail on this, together with definitions and data, see the main paper at https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/home

no children on other farms around Fernhill: in addition to the childless family farms, there were no children in the 1920s at Rhydlydan, next door to Fernhill, nor at Glogddu, Meini, Llwyndu, Shop Newydd, the Glyn, Dyffryn Factory, Brook Forge, Pencelli Isaf, Waunfwlchan (to at least 1925), Waunffort or Tirbach. (Information from Llangain relatives and residents, as well as other sources).

Two locals, Rees Davies of Criegiau-bach and May Bowen, both confirmed the absence of other children. Bowen, who worked for Dylan’s auntie Rach at Pentrewyman, said “No, there was nobody…There wasn’t any boys around there…” She made the same point on two occasions in the interview (CE/NLW). It was only at Sunday school at Symrna chapel, Llangain, and for part of the summer holidays when two friends from Swansea came to a neighbouring property (The Factory, just to the right of Pentrewyman on the map) that Dylan usually had other children of his age with whom he could play (for interviews with the two Swansea friends, see Thomas 2003 pp48-53).

The low numbers of children in the farms around Fernhill when Dylan stayed there in the 1920s is reflected in the rolls of pupils in Llangain Primary School. The numbers fell from 95 in 1896 to just over 40 in 1939. For most of the 1920s, it stayed around the mid-thirties mark. (The school catchment area was the entire parish, as well as Llangain postal addresses over the parish boundary in all directions; for example, Llwyngwyn and Waunfwlchan were within the catchment area.) The fall in the school roll over this period corresponds to a large drop in the Llangain population between 1900 and 1925, largely due to outward migration to find jobs in industry to the east (see H. Williams 2007 and further data in correspondence in 2011). But other factors would also have been at work in reducing the numbers of children, including low marriage rates and high infant mortality.

[50] Miss Griffiths: Dylan’s letter to Caitlin, September 6 1945, in The Collected Letters (2000).

[51] Installed windows: Dylan's daughter, Aeronwy, has recalled that Caitlin installed the windows in the shed for Dylan "so that he could look out over the estuary at the farms that used to belong to the Williams family..." (A video interview by Jennifer Heywood, daughter of the Llansteffan artists and writers, Stanley and Min Lewis, at https://vimeo.com/51516542

[52] Taking guests across: interviews with Jane Dark, Emrys Morris and Sarah Evans, CE/NLW.

took photgraphs: for example, Douglas Glass, used at the front of Dylan’s collection of short stories, A Prospect of the Sea, with a further photo of them disembarking at Black Scar Point in Thomas (2008). Rupert Shephard was another, with a photo of Dylan being carried ashore by Booda, the ferrryman.

cabin cruiser: Billy Williams of Laugharne, p188 Thomas (2004) and CE/NLW.

[53]Brinnin and Mckenna: Brinnin, who was gay and in a long-term relationship with Bill Read, had fallen for Mckenna on a cruise ship. See Thomas (2008) pp23-25.

Fernhill hangman: on whom, see Thomas (2003) chapter 5.

[54] Trip with Americans: Brinnin (1955) chapter 7. On Florence’s peninsula stories, see Colin Edwards’ interview with Gwyneth Edwards, in which he says: “I found her [Florence] tremendously interesting, because she was full of the lore of Carmarthenshire. She had all sorts of information.” CE/NLW

[55] Brinnin on drugs: for more on this, see Thomas (2008) ch. 8

Reading

J. Brinnin (1955) Dylan Thomas in America, Avon

J. H. Evans and E. Rees (2008) The Independents in Llanybri and Llanstephan, in The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, XLIV

D. L. Baker-Jones (1970) The Morris Family of Carmarthenshire in The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, VI

C. Davies (2002) A Nest of Singing Birds, in The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, vol 38

P. Ferris (1999) Dylan Thomas: the Biography, Dent

P. Hansford Johnson (1974) Important to Me, Macmillan

D. John and D. N. Thomas (2010) From Fountain to River: Dylan Thomas and Pontardulais in Cambria, Autumn and at https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomaspontardulais/home

F. Jones (1970) Cwm: (Coomb) A Carmarthenshire House and its Families in The Carmarthenshire Historian, vol 7

S. Knight (2003), The need for a work-life balance, in The Independent on Sunday, October 26.

L. Peach (1988) Community and Individuality in The Prose Writing of Dylan Thomas, Macmillan

R. Poole (2001) The Double Vision of Dylan Thomas, www.RichardPoole.net

E. Rees (2011) House names as history: the Llanstephan area, in The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, XLVII

A. Richards (2012) Great Walks in Carmarthenshire

L. Roberts (2005) Collected Poems, ed. P. McGuiness, Carcanet

R. Stanford-ffoulkes (2004) Dylan – the Cousin

A. Thomas (2009) My Father’s Places, Constable

C. Thomas (1986) My Life with Dylan Thomas, Secker and Warburg

D. M. Thomas (1997) Collected Poems, ed. W. Davies and R. Maud, Everyman

(2000) The Collected Letters, ed. P. Ferris, Dent

Thomas, D. N. (2003), ‘Dylan’s Family Tree’, in Thomas, D. N., Dylan Remembered 1914-34 vol. 1, Seren

(2003) ‘Dylan Thomas' Carmarthenshire Roots’, The Carmarthenshire Antiquary, 39

(2004) Dylan Remembered 1935-53, vol. 2, Seren

(2008) Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas?, Seren

(2011), ‘Dylan and his aunties: the other women in the poet’s life’, Cambria, Autumn and at https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandhisaunties/home

(2013) ‘Dylan Thomas and The Edge of Love’, Cambria, February and at https://sites.google.com/site/dylanthomasandtheedgeoflove/

H. Williams (2007) The Book of Llangain: from farming community to residential village, Halsgrove

R. C. Williams (2012) Dylan Thomas: A Darkness of Meaning, Ph.D thesis, Bangor

H.G. Wright (1931) Southey and Wales in The Welsh Outlook, May 1931

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