LAY, a kind of ancient poem among the French, consisting of very short verses.
There were two sorts of lays; the great, and the little. The first was a poem consisting of twelve couplets of verses, of different measures. The other was a poem consisting of sixteen or twenty verses, divided into four couplets.
These lays were the lyric poetry of the old French poets, who were imitated by some among the English. They were principally used on melancholy subjects, and were said to have been formed on the model of the trochaic verses of Greek and Latin tragedies.
Father Mourgues gives us an extraordinary instance of one of these ancient lays, in his Treatise of French Poetry:
Sur l'appais du monde
Que faut il qu'on fonde,
D'espoir?
Cete mer profonde,
En debris seconde
Fait voir
Calme au matin, Ponde
Et Forage y gronde
Le soir.
Lay-Brothers, among the Romanists, those pious but illiterate persons, who devote themselves in some convent to the service of the religious. They wear a
different habit from that of the religious; but never enter into the choir, nor are present at the chapters; nor do they make any other vow except of constancy and obedience. In the nunneries there are also lay-sisters.
Lay-Man, one who follows a secular employment, and has not entered into holy orders.