"lay firmly" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it to indicate a physical action, for example: "He lay the blanket firmly across the bed."
It seems likely that McGregor's tongue lay firmly in his cheek when he concluded: "Could be quite exciting.
Cage thoroughly disapproved of this awkward, nervy performance – but Bernstein's painfully patient and articulate introductory speech is all the more remarkable when you consider that his own stylistic sympathies lay firmly somewhere between bar lines and key signatures.
"The blame for this criminal act should lay firmly with the perpetrators," a William Hill spokesman told me, adding: "It would be wrong to use this case to make a point on lone working generally".
Heathfield and a number of others on the NUM left agreed with me that there should be no dispensations and that if steelworks had to close down, as British Steel's chairman, Bob Haslam, warned was inevitable, then the responsibility lay firmly at the door of the government, not the NUM.
Austrian-Prussian dualism lay firmly rooted in old Imperial politics.
Lisnyak had always felt an affinity with her fellow Slavs in Russia but her patriotic allegiance lay firmly with Ukraine.
