14 Stonehenge and its Barrows. 



editor of Wace^ at page 78^ lie says " Elles furent conduites daU3 

 la plaine de Salisbury oii, on les voit encore, Elles sont appelees 

 Stonehenge en Anglais, et Pierres levees en Franjais/' 



The lines 17154 — 17513 in Layamon's^ Brut or Chronicle of 

 England (Madden's edition, vol. ii., p. 295—310, 1847), contain an 

 amplified version of the part of Geoffrey of Monmouth's history 

 which relates to Hengist, Ambrosius, Merlin and Stonehenge. 



Neckham,^ in his " De Laudibus Divinse Sapientise," lines 723 — 



746, ed. 1863, p. 457, thus describes Stonehenge. The two previous 



lines are descriptive of the baths of Bath : — 



" Admiranda tibi prsebet spectacula tellus 

 Bruti; summatim tangere pauca libet. 



Balnea Bathoniae ferventia tempore quovia 

 ^gris festina ssepe medentur ope. 



Nobilis est lapidum structura chorea Gigantum, 



Ars experta suum posse peregit opus, 

 Quod ne prodiret in lucem segnius artem 



Se viresque suas consuluisse reor. 

 Hoc opus ascribit Merlino garrula fama, 



Filia figmenti fabula vana refert. 

 Dicta congerie fertur decorata fuisse 



Tellus quae nutrit tot Palamedis aves. 



' Layamon was a priest, and lived at Ernley (Lower Arley otherwise Arley 

 Regis), three-and-a-half miles south-east from Bewdley in Worcestershire. 

 The sources from which he compiled his work are stated by himself to be three 

 in number, viz., a book in English, made by St. Bede, another in Latin, made by 

 St. Albin and Austin, and a third made by a French Cleik named Wace, who presen- 

 ted it to Q.ueen Eleanor (consort of Henry the Second). To the third, viz., the 

 Anglo-Norman metrical Chronicle of the Brut, translated from the well-known 

 Historia Britonum of Geoffrey of Monmouth by Wace, and completed in the 

 year 1155, which embraces the History of Britain, fabulous or true, from the 

 destruction of Troy, and subsequent arrival of Brutus, to the death of King 

 Cadwallader, in A.D. 689. Wace's Brut is comprised in 15,300 lines, whilst 

 the poem of the English versifier extends to nearly 32,250. Sir F. Madden 

 (the editor of " Layamon's Brut," published by the Society of Antiquaries, 

 1847), thinks it most probable that it was written or completed at the beginning 

 of the thirteenth century. His language belongs to that transition period in 

 which the ground-work of Anglo-Saxon phraseology and grammar stiU existed, 

 although gradually yielding to the influence of the popular forms of speech. 



^ Neckham, born 1157, was elected Abbot of Cirencester in 121.3, and he died 

 at Kempsey, near Worcester, in 1217, and it is said that by direction of his 

 friend the bishop, he was buried in Worcester Cathedral. 



I 



