1774 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry I. Diss. i. sig. a2 At the conclusion of most of the tales it is said that these Lais were made by the poets of Bretaigne.

1778 T. Warton Hist. Eng. Poetry II. Addit. sig. h2^v But Marie's was not the only Collection of British Lais, in French.

1838 E. Guest Hist. Eng. Rhythms II. 103 The ‘short measures’ of Skelton..may perhaps be looked upon as the direct descendants of the Anglo-Saxon rhythms, though it must be confessed they much resemble, in their flow, the lais and virelais of the fifteenth century.

1855 H. H. Milman Hist. Lat. Christianity VI. xiv. vii. 547 Slighter pieces which may call to mind the Lais and Serventes of the South.

1865 T. Taylor tr. T. Hersart de la Villemarqué Ballads & Songs Brittany 125 A lai by a northern trouvère on the same subject was discovered by M. de Fréminville, in the Bibliothèque du Roi.

1883 H. M. Kennedy tr. B. ten Brink Early Eng. Lit. ii. 179 The Breton lais retain most fully their native fragrance. They are usually romantic even when the topic is comic... The poem is often pervaded by a tone of elegiac longing.

1905 E. Rickert in Mod. Philol. II. 376 The fresh literary impulse that came with the Normans found little to do with the old Saxon heroes. A few tales were transformed into the lai or chanson de geste or roman d'aventure—Havelock, Horn, Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton.

1906 Mod. Lang. Notes XXI. ii. 49/1 The author of Sir Orfeo makes here the same careful distinction between the tale (‘conte’ or ‘aventure’) and the Breton lai that Marie had made.

1907 St. J. Lucas in Oxf. Bk. French Verse p. vii Various other kinds of lyric poetry begin to appear at the end of the twelfth century, motets,..rondeaux, lais, ballettes and virelais.

1923 J. Vising Anglo-Norman Lang. & Lit. 47 Breton lais in England are mentioned in Roman de Renard.

1925 A. Bell Le Lai d'Haveloc 26 There is, however, not only a general connection with the ‘lais’ but also a special one with those of Marie.

1929 M. Wattie Lai le Freine p. xvi Obviously the Celtic lais arose out of narratives (contes).

1932 Oxf. Hist. Music (ed. 2) II. ii. v. 285 The initial stanzas of two trouvères lais are written on the melody of ‘Ave gloriosa virginum regina’.

1932 Oxf. Hist. Music (ed. 2) II. ii. v. 286 On the other side the lai is related to the chanson de geste and to the other popular songs of the time, to which many of the anonymous lais show some resemblance.

1940 Grove's Dict. Music (ed. 4) III. 269/1 The lais (long lyrical poems written in twelve pairs of stanzas, each pair having a different metrical form and a different melody from the rest, except the last pair, which repeats metre and melody of the first) are all set to one musical part only.

1954 A. J. Bliss Sir Orfeo p. xxxii There can be little doubt that these passages refer to a genuine Breton lai, not to a narrative lai, still less to a strictly Classical conte.

1965 R. S. Loomis in Bessinger & Creed Medieval & Linguistic Stud. 237 We possess three Breton lais: Doon, Desiré, and Gurun..which evince some knowledge of Scottish geography.

1896 B. S. Carey & H. N. Tuck Chin Hills I. i. i. 3 The Northern Chins call themselves Yo, the Tashons, Haka, and more southern tribes Lai.

1896 B. S. Carey & H. N. Tuck Chin Hills I. i. iii. 23 The Hakas call themselves Lai, and Yo is the general name by which the Chins call their race.

1896 B. S. Carey & H. N. Tuck Chin Hills I. i. xiv. 152 The clans which claim the title of Lais are the Hakas, Klang-klangs, Yokwas... The first two are universally acknowledged as Lais, and refuse to admit that the others belong to their race.

1897 A. G. E. Newland Pract. Hand-bk. Lang. Lais 1 The Lais are the great tribe and its offshoots that occupy the Chin Hills.

1906 J. G. Scott Burma i. 106 The Tashôn tribe is..the most numerous, and next to them come the Hakas, also called the Lai.

1924 C. M. Enriquez Races Burma iii. 15 The Haka (a group of about ten villages including the parent village) claim to be the only true Lai.

1963 F. K. Lehman Struct. Chin Soc. i. 30 The Haka villagers call themselves lai, thinking of themselves as better than their cultural near relations to the South.

1906 J. G. Scott Burma i. 106 Lai is said to be likely to become the lingua franca of the Chin Hills.

1897 A. G. E. Newland Pract. Hand-bk. Lang. Lais 1 The language of these people is the Lai language, called by the Burmese Baungshè, by which term we have hitherto known it. Dialects of it are spoken by all the surrounding tribes, but nearly all understand the Lai tongue.

1897 A. G. E. Newland Pract. Hand-bk. Lang. Lais 3 Unlike the Southern Chin language, it will be found that the consonants ‘f’ and ‘r’ are both used in the Lai speech.

1924 C. M. Enriquez Races Burma vii. 43 The Lai tribes are controlled..by Chiefs.