LAYAMON, also LAWEMAN, author of the Britt, a metrical chronicle of Britain from the arrival of the fabulous Brutus to the death of king Cadwallader, 689 A.D., was, be himself tells us, a priest at Ernely, on the Severn, in Worcestershire, and appears to have flourished about the beginning of the 13th century. Nothing more is known con cerning him. The value of the Brut is not so much literary as linguistic. It has no high pretensions to originality, being confessedly a compilation from Bede, St. Augustine (of England), St. Albin, and more particularly Wace, the Anglo-Norman poet, of whose Brut a'Angleterre it is in fact mainly an amplified translation. But Waee's performance is itself only a translation, with additions, from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin Ilistoria Britt())rum; and that again at least declares itself to be in turn a translation from a Welsh or Breton original (see GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH). It will thus be seen that Layamon's work is--only a third reproduction of a Celtic story; but in justice to the author it must be stated that his version is more poetical and dramatic than those of his predecessors.
The great value of the poem, however, is, as we have said, linguistic rather than literary. It shows us the Anglo-Saxon changing or changed into and a study of its peculiarities of grammar and phraseology enables us to trace the process by which the Saxon of Alfred and the chronicle became transformed into the English of Chaucer and Wycliffe. One curious and important fact is determined by it—viz., that 200 years alter the Norman conquest, the use of words of French origin—so marked a feature of Chaucer's diction—bad scarcely begun. In the 32,250 lines which the poem contains, there are not more. than 50 such words. The versification is very arbitrary, exhibiting sometimes the alliteration of Anglo-Saxon. and sometimes the rhyme of French poetry. The work was edited (with a literal translation, notes, and a grammatical glossary) for the society of antiquaries of London by sir Fred. Madden (Lond. 3 vols. 1847).