Career
He was a parish priest of Lower Areley, or Areley Regis, a village on the Severn River in Worcestershire. An educated man, he was an inveterate reader of old books and a collector of tales and legends. Among his books were an English translation of Bede and Le Roman de Brut by the Anglo-Norman poet Wace. Wace's book, which is a translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, fired Layamon with the desire to write an English version. In such manner were the Latin of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the French Geste of Wace siphoned into the English literary tradition.
Brut (ca. 1190) is a Middle English poem compiled and recast by the English priest Layamon. It is named for Britain's mythical founder, Brutus of Troy. It is contained in the MS. Cotton Caligula A ix, written in the first quarter of the 13th century, and in the Cotton Otho C xiii, about fifty years later (though in this edition it is shorter). Both exist in the British Museum.
The Brut is 16,095 lines long and narrates the history of Britain. It is largely based on the Anglo-Norman Roman de Brut by Wace, which is in turn inspired by Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, though is longer than both and includes an enlarged section on the life and exploits of King Arthur. The rhyming style is the alliterative verse line style commonly used in Middle English poetry.
