LAYAMON, or Laweman, the author of a chronicle of Britain entitled Brut, a poetical semi-Saxon paraphrase of the Brut cι Angleterre of Wace, was as he himself informs us a priest who read the services of the church at Ernleye, on the banks of the Severn (now Lower Arley or Arley Regis, 3£ miles south-east from Bewdley, Worcestershire). Of his personal history nothing further is known. Nor can the date of the work with which his name is associated be very accurately ascertained; but the probability is that it was not completed before the beginning of the 13th century. The original text, with a literal translation, notes, and a grammatical glossary, was first edited by Sir Frederic Madden in 1847. See English Language, vol. vii. p. 394; and English Literature, ib. p. 408.