Layamon or Laghamon (UK: /ˈlaɪ.əmən, -mɒn/, US: /ˈleɪ.əmən, ˈlaɪ-/; Middle English: [ˈlaɣamon]) – spelled Laȝamon or Laȝamonn in his time, occasionally written Lawman – was an English poet of the late 12th/early 13th century and author of the Brut, a notable work that was the first to present the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in English poetry (the first Arthurian poems were by Frenchman Chrétien de Troyes).
J. R. R. Tolkien valued him as a transmitter of early English legends in a fashion comparable to the role played with respect to Icelandic legend by Snorri Sturluson.[1]