I have been busy recently writing some articles for Welsh Country Magazine. I have enjoyed researching the lives of three interesting women and clarifying the locations of their graves. Amelia Earhart is remembered in Pwll and in Burry Port, the late Victorian novelist Allen Raine ( her real name was Ada Puddicombe) from Tresaith is buried in Ceredigion and Alice Douglas Pennant, a society lady from Penrhyn who is buried in Capel Curig in Snowdonia. But sadly some of the interesting stories I find I cannot pursue because of the absence of a grave – and one of those is the story of Rhys, otherwise known as ‘Arise,’ Evans, a prophet and mystic who began his working life as an apprentice tailor in Wrexham. He had a fungal growth on his nose, and when he heard that the King’s hand could cure him, he intercepted King Charles in St. James Park, kissed the King’s hand and rubbed his nose with it. This understandably troubled the King and clearly being a monarch isn’t all it is cracked up to be, but apparently it cured Arise.
