Editing Twm Siôn Cati (section)

== Historicity ==
The character of Twm Siôn Cati is based on a real person named Thomas Jones (1532–1609). Jones was said to be a landowner, an antiquary, genealogist and bard, whose manuscripts are kept at the [[National Library of Wales]].<ref name=IWA>{{cite web |last1=Lambert |first1=Joanna |title=Moving on from the Myth of the Unsophisticated Cambrians |url=https://www.iwa.wales/agenda/2023/01/moving-on-from-the-myth-cambrians/ |access-date=6 February 2025}}</ref> He is also recorded as marrying Joan, the daughter of [[John Prise|John Price]] an advisor to [[Thomas Cromwell]] during the [[dissolution of the monasteries]]. Price was also an antiquarian and a collector of rare Welsh documents, such as the [[Black Book of Carmarthen]]. Jones is said to have been a steward who "often had recourse to the law".<ref name=IWA></ref> He is also said to have been pardoned of his offences in 1559, being named as "Thomas Johns alias Catty".<ref name=WBO>{{cite web |last1=Jenkins |first1=A. David Fraser |title=JONES, THOMAS ('Twm Shôn Catti'; 1532 - 1609), landowner, antiquary, genealogist, and bard |url=https://biography.wales/article/s-JONE-THO-1530 |website=Dictionary of Welsh Biography |access-date=6 February 2025}}</ref>

[[File:John Dee Ashmolean.jpg|thumb|[[John Dee]] corresponded with Thomas Jones, who visited Dee at London and Mortlake. This Thomas Jones has been suggested as the historic Twm Siôn Cati.]]
Various manuscripts ascribed to Thomas Jones begin around 1570 and he is known to have assisted George Owen and Lewys Dwnn and the officers of the Heralds College. Thomas Jones is known to have visited Dee in London in 1590 and at his home in Mortlake six years later, the two also corresponded with each other in 1597 in which Dee referred to him as "my cousin". Jones was also steward of Caron in 1601 and died in 1609, when his will was proved at [[Carmarthen]].<ref name=WBO></ref>

It is considered unlikely however, that the numerous tales attributed to Twm Siôn Cati were the exploits of this one man but rather a number of raiders and [[highwaymen]] (possibly with similar or identical names to that of Thomas Jones) who operated in the Tregaron area.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Stephens |editor1-first=Meic |title=The new companion to the literature of Wales |date=1998 |publisher=University of Wales Press |location=Cardiff |isbn=9780708313831 |page=250 |edition=New, completely rev. |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_New_Companion_to_the_Literature_of_W/WoMYAAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0&bsq=Oxford%20Companion%20to%20the%20Literature%20of%20Wales}}</ref>