Concerning the Origins of the Medieval Lai

The ‘Lay of the Beach’ and the Breton Lay Genre

“…Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson demonstrate that the term quickly came to be accepted 'as a rendering of the Breton or Fr Despite the list of instruments, it is not clear whether he himself has heard such lays, and he does not state whether vocal melodies or lyrics were involved. The term ljoðsonga, however, suggests that they were, in amalgamating two Old Norse terms, referring to song -ljóð, 'a lay, song', and söngr, meaning 'a song, singing, music' 32 -as an equivalent to lai, a word whose source Ferdinand Wolf identifies as 'the Welsh Llais or Gaelic Laio(dh), meaning a musical sound or a song, Laidh meaning a poem', 33 implying that music and lyrics were requisite. Christopher Page observes that the term lai originally related to a stanzaic song, and was applied to other forms by professional entertainers to capitalize on the mystique of the ancient Celtic world: 'the involvement of many kinds of entertainers in disseminating such stories -singers, narrators, string-players, and so on -may explain why it is almost impossible to form a clear impression of what the lais de Bretaigne mentioned by Marie de France and other authors actually comprised.'…”