In search of the Welsh Robin Hood

May 14, 2008 RJH

In one of those old books brought splendidly to life by Google, we read of a mysterious cave deep in the Welsh hills:

Amongst other curiosities I must tell you of an excavation in a conical hill named Cerrig Twyi which I visited in Caermarthenshire. The hill is five or six hundred feet high and beneath its gigantic form rushes the river Towy with impetuous fury. The excavation alluded to is called Thomas’s Cave and is supposed to have been the residence of Tym Sion Catti a noted robber who afterwards married the heiress of Ystad Fin.

The cave of this Tym Sion Catti fellow — the “Welsh Robin Hood” — was visited by my father when he was a lad. Almost sixty years later, and in memory of my late grandfather, dad and I decided to find the cave again.

Dad by the Towy. The hill is to the left with the “cave” (really the space created by a collapsed rock) hidden in the trees.

Inside the cave. Much of the carved graffiti dates to the 19th century.

The landscape of this part of mid-Wales: hills, remote churches, and sheep, lots of sheep.

Welsh is not a gimmick around here. For many, it’s their native and preferred tongue. For some reason many of the people buried in the cemetery carried the name “Theophilus.”