 Three of the five surviving manuscript copies of the "Lais" are written in continental French, whilst British Library MS Harley 978, written in Anglo-Norman French in the mid-13th century, may reflect the dialect of the copyist.Breton lais were certainly in existence before Marie de France chose to recast the themes that she heard from Breton minstrels into poetic narratives in Anglo-Norman verse, but she may have been the first to present a "new genre of the lai in narrative form.