Wace's Roman de Brut and Layamon's adaptation of it have been closely compared a number of times, and "canonical" characterizations of the two texts and the two poets were established as early as 1906. Wace was quintessentially Norman, a professional writer who enjoyed royal patronage. Layamon was "a thorough mediaeval Saxon," a rustic priest who wrote to please himself, perhaps out of a sense of patriotism.2 Layamon's thorough, even militant, "Englishness" has long been observed in his textual practicehis language, poetic form, and figuresand in his imaginative reworking of certain characters and episodes.3 Dorothy Everett and E. G. Stanley have also explained how a militant Anglo-Saxon could have moral and political reasons for choosing to translate a Norman, anti-Anglo-Saxon poem.4 What has not been done, and what I would like to do here, is to show that the moral and political motives which led Layamon to choose to rewrite Wace's poem in an