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 said to have been formed on the model of the trochaic verses of the Greek and Latin tragedies.

Father Mourgues gives 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'apoir? Cette mer profonde, En debris seconde' Fait voir Calme au matin, l'onde Et l'orage y gronde Le soir.