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was followed by spies, arrested for sedition and widely viewed as a heretic. Ensuring he offended the tastes of everyone in power during his lifetime, he was also an opium eater, a vociferous religious dissenter, a political liberal and a supporter of the American rebels and the French Revolution. Iolo was also a witty guest and a brilliant storyteller, who wrote anti-war poems and drinking songs. He was a vegetarian, herbalist and tea addict, and walked the length and breadth of Wales accompanied by his horse, which he rode just once in his life. Although he received money from wealthy patrons in London and Wales, every now and then Iolo had to work for a living. During his life he was a stone mason, a farmer, a bookshop owner, and a grocer selling ‘East Indian Sweets: Uncontaminated by Human Gore’. Iolo’s main ambition was to cross the Atlantic in search of the Welsh Red Indians referred to in various manuscripts by Sir Walter Raleigh and other European explorers. By way of preparation he slept rough in the fields near his home but became ill, never recovering enough to make the trip. During his last days Iolo begged the surviving members of his family to fulfil his unfinished ambition.
    ‘So, Auntie ’Fon, is there no one else interesting in our family on Mam’s side?’
    ‘Come to think of it, Dyfnallt’s ancestor William Owen was quite famous in his time. Well, infamous would be a better way of describing him, as it would with you. They say he was the greatest-ever Welsh smuggler, not drugs mind. He was executed in Carmarthen. I think he wrote an autobiography, too. They discovered it quite recently. Now that’s a coincidence, isn’t it?’
    I later found out the previously unknown autobiography of William Owen had turned up in 1982. After a few successful smuggling runs between Wales and the Isle of Man, Owen worked in South America for a well-armed worldwide smuggler known as The Terrible. My own smuggling activities had centred largely on Europe and Asia. Though I didn’t know it, I’d soon be heading for his old stamping ground. Owen’s sexual liaisons resulted in illegitimate children of all colours, and his chronicle of scams, acquittals and debauchery would put any modern-day smuggler or playboy to shame.
    ‘This gets better and better, Auntie ’Fon. Any others?’
    ‘Well there’s my mother’s half-brother Madoc. I can’t go into it too much. I think there was a bit of incest going on. There was more of that in those days. But he’s the bugger who gave me my name, Afon Wen, which I’ve never been bloody keen on. You know what it means, don’t you?’
    ‘Of course. It’s Welsh for White River.’
    ‘That’s right. A bloody good name for a squaw, don’t you think? Madoc always claimed he was a Red Indian brought up in a wigwam with totem poles outside it.’
    ‘Perhaps he was an opium addict too?’
    ‘Maybe. He did have some crackpot ideas. Thought he was a direct descendant of a Welsh prince who was also the first of the Incas. He used to say the Incas were his bloody cousins. I ask you! Mind, Madoc was all bloody there all right, and he certainly had Red Indian blood in him from somewhere.’
    ‘Do you know which tribe?
    ‘No idea. They spoke Welsh, according to Madoc. God knows how.’
    ‘What happened to Madoc in the end?’
    ‘He wanted to go to Patagonia and join the Welsh colony there. A lot of people from the valleys round here had gone to Patagonia for a new life, and they got on very well with the Indians, by all accounts. Madoc got jealous because he had always felt he belonged on the other side of the Atlantic withthe Red Indians and their wigwams. He never made it though, poor bugger. He got killed by lightning.’
    I drank my tea, smoked a couple of fags and bid Auntie ’Fon goodbye.
    ‘Don’t leave it so bloody long next time.’
    I never saw her again.
    The oldest surviving member of my paternal family was my grandfather’s eldest sister, Katie Marks. She was