Layamon, the son of Leovenath, called in the later text of his poem Laweman the son of Leuca, was, as he himself tells us, a priest at Ernley (now Arley), on the banks of the Severn, near Bewdley, and appears to have flourished about the close of the 12th century. Nothing more is known concerning him. He produced an amplified imitation of Wace's Brut d'Angleterre, the value of which is not so much literary as linguistic, although it is the earliest existing poem of considerable length in the English tongue. It was confessedly a compilation from Bede, St Albin, and Austin, and more particularly Wace. Wace's Brut contains 15,300, and Layamon's 32,250 lines, the additions consisting of dramatic speeches put into the mouths of the figures and of an extension of the Arthurian romance with names of persons and places supplied. The author seems to have been a simple, pious, and patriotic priest—in his own words 'it came to him in mind and in his chief thought that he would tell the noble deeds of the English.' The versification is very arbitrary and rude, exhibiting sometimes the alliteration of Anglo-Saxon, and sometimes the rhyme of French poetry. The language shows us the Anglo-Saxon changing or changed into Early English, 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 Wyclif. Sir Frederick Madden pointed out that in the earlier of the two MSS. (13th century) of Layamon's Brut, there were less than fifty words derived from the Normans; while in the second (written about 1250) twenty of these are dropped and only about forty more added. There are thus but ninety words of French origin in the two texts, together more than 56,800 lines.
The work was edited, with a literal translation, notes, and a grammatical glossary, for the Society of Antiquaries of London by Sir Fred. Madden (3 vols. Lond. 1847). See vol. iii. chap. 6 (1888) of Morley's English Writers.