The poem begins with the destruction of Troy and the flight of “AEneas the duke” into Italy.  Brutus, a great-grandson of AEneas, gathers his people and sets out to find a new land in the West.  Then follows the founding of the Briton kingdom, and the last third of the poem, which is over thirty thousand lines in length, is taken up with the history of Arthur and his knights.  If the Brut had no merits of its own, it would still interest us, for it marks the first appearance of the Arthurian legends in our own tongue.  A single selection is given here from Arthur’s dying speech, familiar to us in Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur.  The reader will notice here two things:  first, that though the poem is almost pure Anglo-Saxon,[50] our first speech has already dropped many inflections and is more easily read than Beowulf; second, that French influence is already at work in Layamon’s rimes and assonances, that is, the harmony resulting from using the same vowel sound in several successive lines: 

And ich wulle varen to Avalun:   And I will fare to Avalun,
To vairest alre maidene,        To fairest of all maidens,
To Argante there quene,         To Argante the queen,
Alven swithe sceone.             An elf very beautiful. 
And heo seal mine wunden        And she shall my wounds
Makien alle isunde,             Make all sound;
Al hal me makien                All whole me make
Mid haleweiye drenchen.          With healing drinks. 
And seothe ich cumen wulle      And again will I come
To mine kiueriche               To my kingdom
And wunien mid Brutten          And dwell with Britons
Mid muchelere wunne.             With mickle joy. 
Aefne than worden               Even (with) these words
Ther com of se wenden           There came from the sea
That wes an sceort bat lithen,  A short little boat gliding,
Sceoven mid uthen,              Shoved by the waves;
And twa wimmen ther inne,       And two women therein,
Wunderliche idihte.              Wondrously attired. 
And heo nomen Arthur anan       And they took Arthur anon
And an eovste hine vereden      And bore him hurriedly,
And softe hine adun leiden,     And softly laid him down,
And forth gunnen lithen.         And forth gan glide.

METRICAL ROMANCES.  Love, chivalry, and religion, all pervaded by the spirit of romance,—­these are the three great literary ideals which find expression in the metrical romances.  Read these romances now, with their knights and fair ladies, their perilous adventures and tender love-making, their minstrelsy and tournaments and gorgeous cavalcades,—­as if humanity were on parade, and life itself were one tumultuous holiday in the open air,—­and you have an epitome of the whole childish, credulous soul of the Middle Ages.  The Normans first brought this type of romance into England, and so popular did it become, so thoroughly did it express the romantic spirit of the time, that it speedily overshadowed all other forms of literary expression.