Dylan's paternal grandfather, Evan Thomas, came from the upper Tywi valley, born and brought up on farms around Brechfa; I've provided an extensive family tree for the Thomases in chapter 1 of Dylan Remembered 1914-1934, published in 2003. It was an area that the young Dylan used to visit with his father. Robert Williams (2012) has provided an account that links this paternal homeland with the Jarvis valley and hills of Dylan's short stories. (1)
Evan's wife, Anne Lewis, came from the right-hand side of the Tywi, from the village of Llangadog, which she gives as her birthplace in census returns. In 1841 and 1851, she was living with her parents at Black Rock, Llandingat, Llandovery. Anne’s father, William Lewis, was born in Llangadog, in 1795. He was a gardener who eventually moved to Carmarthen, and was living at The Poplars with Evan and Anne at the 1881 census. I’ll come back to William in a minute.
Dylan also had an aunt who was born in Llangadog, in 1867. She was Ellen Anna Keene. She married William Thomas in 1897; he was the brother of Dylan’s father, D.J. Thomas, so Ellen was Dylan’s aunt. At the time of the marriage, she was living in Maidenhead, and her father is given as Robert Keene, a farm bailiff. (2)
Ellen and William lived at 12 Fulham Road, Kensington, when William was a hosier’s assistant (1901) and then at 13 Derby Ave North Finchley when he was a shop assistant (1911). William died around 1947 – see Dylan’s letter to his parents of January 12 1947 in which he refers to “poor Will.” Poor Will was also the title of a short story that Dylan was thinking about writing in late 1946.
And now back to William Lewis, Dylan’s great-grandfather. William is “Grandpa” in Dylan’s short story, A Visit to Grandpa’s, in which Grandpa expresses his determination to be buried, not in Llansteffan, but in Llangadog. It’s a story about D.J. Thomas’s grandfather that he used to tell Dylan when he was a boy:
"He said that Llangadock was better for the tubes."
"I am going to Llangadock to be buried."
“There’s no sense lying dead in Llanstephan...The ground is comfy in Llangadock; you can twitch your legs without putting them in the sea.”
William Lewis died on February 20 1888 at The Poplars, and his wish was granted. His body was brought back to the church in Llangadog and buried there. His burial is recorded in the parish registers on February 23 1888.
We don’t know for sure whether Dylan Thomas visited Llangadog. We do know from some 1960 interviews(3) that he had been to Carreg Cennen. When he was living in Laugharne, he and his friend, Phil Richards, came out to Trapp:
“There’s one thing that sticks out in the memory. We went to Carreg Cennen castle. And he named the Loughor and the Cennen, and all the rivers, and we seen the castle from a little pub called the Cennen Arms, and had bread and cheese and pickles, and he enjoyed it. You know, he enjoyed it.” (CE/NLW)
Carreg Cennen and the Swadde are mentioned in Under Milk Wood, as part of the Rev. Eli Jenkins’ morning prayer.
It’s also said, but without confirmation, that Dylan came to Llangadog to visit his friend, Keidrych Rhys (1914-1987), journalist, editor and poet. It seems that Rhys had been born at Blaenswadde farm, near Llanddeusant. He was born William Ronald Rees Jones, son of Morgan and Margaretta Jones nee Thomas. He later adopted the name Keidrych Rhys, seemingly taken from the river Ceidrych which ran near his parents’ farm. After his marriage to the poet Lynette Roberts, he lived from 1937 at Pen-y-bont farm, Llangadog, from where he edited the influential magazine, Wales, which he had also founded. He and Roberts later moved to Llanybri.
(1) Robert C. Williams (2012) Dylan Thomas: A Darkness of Meaning, Ph.D thesis, Bangor, with a copy at the National Library of Wales.
(2) This information about Ellen Anna Keene is a correction. My thanks to Jane Marshall.
(3) Interviews carried out by Colin Edwards in the 1960s. See Dylan Remembered, Seren, 2003 and 2004, ed. by D. N. Thomas