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Updated: June 18, 2025
In 1155 Wace, the author of the Roman de Rou, turned Geoffrey's work into a French poem entitled Brut d'Angleterre, "brut" being a Welsh word meaning chronicle. About the year 1200 Wace's poem was Englished by Layamon, a priest of Arley Regis, on the border stream of Severn.
It is probable that Layamon did not make up these stories, but that many of them are old tales he heard from the people among whom he lived. Layamon finished his book towards the end of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth. Perhaps he sat quietly writing it in his cell when the angry barons were forcing King John to sign the Magna Charta.
Layamon's Brut is in thirty thousand lines, partly alliterative and partly rhymed, but written in pure Saxon English with hardly any French words. The style is rude but vigorous, and, at times, highly imaginative. Wace had amplified Geoffrey's chronicle somewhat, but Layamon made much larger additions, derived, no doubt, from legends current on the Welsh border.
Layamon began to journey, far he went over the land And won the noble books, which he for pattern took. He told the English book that Saint Beda made. Another he took in Latin which Saint Albin made, And the fair Austin who baptism brought hither. Wace he was called, He well could write. . . . . . . . . Layamon laid these books down and the leaves turned.
Layamon tells many wonderful stories of Arthur, from the time he was born to his last great battle in which he was killed, fighting against the rebel Modred. This is how Layamon tells the story of Arthur's death, or rather of his "passing": "Arthur went to Cornwall with a great army. Modred heard that and he against him came With unnumbered folk. There were many of them fated.
At times, too, Layamon has neither rhyme nor alliteration in his lines, sometimes he has both, so that his poem is a link between the old poetry and the new. I hope that you are not tired with this long explanation, for I think if you take the trouble to understand it, it may make the rest of this chapter more interesting. Now I will tell you a little more of the poem itself.
During the thirteenth century appeared a series of rhyming chroniclers, the chief of whom were Layamon and Robert of Gloucester. "The Land of Cockayne," a satirical poem, said to have been written by Michael of Kildare, belongs also to the thirteenth century, as well as many anonymous poems, both amatory and religious.
Our three most important Arthurian chroniclers, Geoffrey, Wace, and Layamon, were all men of marked individuality and ability; each lives for us with as distinct a personality as if we had far more than our very imperfect knowledge of the details of his life.
We have followed it down through many forms: Welsh, in the stories of The Mabinogion; Latin, in the stories of Geoffrey of Monmouth; French, in the stories of Wace and Map; Semi-Saxon, in the stories of Layamon; Middle English, in the stories of Malory; and at last English as we now speak it, in the stories of Tennyson.
Like Wace, Layamon called his book the Brut, because it is the story of the Britons, who took their name from Brutus, and of Arthur the great British hero. This book is known, therefore, as Layamon's Brut. Layamon took Wace's book for a foundation, but he added a great deal to it, and there are many stories in Layamon not to be found in Wace.
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