Sir Rhys ap Thomas of Dinefwr was the most powerful man in south west Wales in the late fifteenth century. In 1485 he brought his forces to Henry Tudor on the march to Bosworth, and Welsh tradition has long claimed that it was Rhys, or one of his men, who struck down Richard III in the battle. He was knighted and rewarded, and when he died in 1525 he was buried at the Franciscan friary in Carmarthen.
When the friary was dissolved his tomb was moved to St Peter's Church, where it still stands. According to Nick Brunger, when the tomb was opened during a restoration, the bones that had made up Sir Rhys's right arm were found to be missing. Nobody knew why. Brunger notes that his ghost, if it walks, is therefore completely 'armless.
The joke is the point of the story. There is no account of a sighting of Sir Rhys, and the missing arm is an anecdote rather than a recorded find. It is included because it is a genuine piece of Carmarthen lore about one of the town's most famous dead.
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