Play it as it lies, lays, lyes....HELP!

[ColinL]

So if I write “ this is where I lay “ , and I am laying in that spot at the time , how does it become past tense ?
Im not a linguist, so this is a question not a comment.

Unless you are a hen, you are not laying in that spot. You might say, This is where I lay yesterday and today I lie again in the same spot.

The different forms include .
I lie down on the spot, meaning I am carrying out the action of lying down in the present.
I lay down on the spot, meaning I carried out the action of lying down in the past.
I am lying on the spot means that's where I am and what I am doing - a continuous situation in the present.
I was lying on the spot means that's where I was and what I was doing - a continuous action in the past.

Now just to make things confused, you can use lay to mean an action carried out on somebody or something in the present. For instance, a officer surrendering might say I lay my sword at your feet in a quaintly old world way. WH Auden used this form in this first line of a poem: Lay your sleeping head, my love.....

But the past form of lay when used in this way is laid, as in I laid my sword at his feet.

[landlord]

"Play it as it lays" is an ancient golf saying that owes more to the internal rhyme than it does to grammar.

[Bailey]

Unless you are a hen, you are not laying in that spot. You might say, This is where I lay yesterday and today I lie again in the same spot.

The different forms include .
I lie down on the spot, meaning I am carrying out the action of lying down in the present.
I lay down on the spot, meaning I carried out the action of lying down in the past.
I am lying on the spot means that's where I am and what I am doing - a continuous situation in the present.
I was lying on the spot means that's where I was and what I was doing - a continuous action in the past.

Now just to make things confused, you can use lay to mean an action carried out on somebody or something in the present. For instance, a officer surrendering might say I lay my sword at your feet in a quaintly old world way. WH Auden used this form in this first line of a poem: Lay your sleeping head, my love.....

But the past form of lay when used in this way is laid, as in I laid my sword at his feet.

Let me reread this a couple of times and I should be able to follow along , lol. Thanks.

[aaagc]

‘Layed’ is a more complicated story. It is no longer a proper word. It is considered archaic. That is, it might still be used when someone is trying to create an old time feel, but nobody uses it outside of that.

[bl8d]

lie still my ball, for they know not of what they spake.