England, though familiar to French and Italian minstrels. Legends of Arthur
and his court were probably first taken to Brittany by Welsh emigrants in
the fifth and sixth centuries. They became immensely popular wherever they
were told, and they were slowly carried by minstrels and story-tellers all
over Europe. That they had never received literary form or recognition was
due to a peculiarity of mediæval literature, which required that every tale
should have some ancient authority behind it. Geoffrey met this demand by
creating an historical manuscript of Welsh history. That was enough for the
age. With Geoffrey and his alleged manuscript to rest upon, the Norman-
French writers were free to use the fascinating stories which had been-for
centuries in the possession of their wandering minstrels. Geoffrey's Latin
history was put into French verse by Gaimar _(c_. 1150) and by Wace (_c_.
1155), and from these French versions the work was first translated into
English. From about 1200 onward Arthur and Guinevere and the matchless band
of Celtic heroes that we meet later (1470) in Malory's _Morte d' Arthur_
became the permanent possession of our literature.

LAYAMON'S BRUT (_c_. 1200). This is the most important of the English
riming chronicles, that is, history related in the form of doggerel verse,
probably because poetry is more easily memorized than prose. We give here a
free rendering of selected lines at the beginning of the poem, which tell
us all we know of Layamon, the first who ever wrote as an Englishman for
Englishmen, including in the term all who loved England and called it home,
no matter where their ancestors were born.

Now there was a priest in the land named Layamon. He was son of Leovenath
--may God be gracious unto him. He dwelt at Ernley, at a noble church on
Severn's bank. He read many books, and it came to his mind to tell the
noble deeds of the English. Then he began to journey far and wide over the
land to procure noble books for authority. He took the English book that