LAYAMON, liVya-mon (c.1200). The author of the Brut, a metrical chronicle of Britain. All that is known of him is told in the opening lines of his poem. He was a priest dwelling at Ernley on the Severn (Arley Regis. in North Wo•cestershire). It came to his mind, he says, to relate the noble deeds of the English; and to this end he traveled about to procure noble hooks. The book he made most use of was the Homan de Brut (11551, by an Anglo-Norman poet named Wace. Wace's poem in turn was derived largely from Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the British kings, written in T,Ntin prose (about 1139). But in his wanderings Layamon gathered other traditions which Ile turned to good account. His poem derives its name from Brut. or Brutus, a great-grandson of .tEneas. After the fall of Troy many of the Trojans, it was believed, were taken to Greece, where their descendants were living as slaves. They are freed by Brut and conducted to Albion. From this point Layamon relates the history of Britain down to the death of Cathvalader, who, according to tradition, was the last of the Celtic kings. Ile mentions Cymbeline, and tells the
story of Lear and his unkind daughters, and a large section of his ,poem is devoted to the deeds of Arthur. The Brut is of great philo logical interest. It exists in two manuscripts which are assigned respectively to about 1200 and 1250. The older and better manuscript con tains 32,243 short lines. The verse is at times alliterative as in Old English or Anglo-Saxon; and again assonance or rhyme is employed in imitation of the French. There occur. however, not more than a hundred words of French origin; a fact to which attention has often been called to show that in Layamon's time the French and English tongues had hardly begun to intermingle. The two manuscripts were edited with translation by F. Madden for the Society of Antiquaries (3 vols., London, 1847). Consult also Ten Brink, Early English Literature, vol. i. trans. (New York, ISS3). See GEOFFREY OF