Michael Layton

A mythical figure, Michael Layton (anglicised from Mikhallis Laeton) is an obscure Germanic warrior, originally from a mythical place called Oister Baie in Ireland. Born in the 5th century AD, he was credited with being instrumental in the German rebellion and victory against the Huns in 454. Though reputably an Arian Christian, like many other Goths, Layton was apparently notorious for drinking and sexual exploits, arrousing the occasional wrath of the church. He was also accused of bestiality by other Germanic princes.

Layton was known as the bane as well as an aid of a local Hun merchant known as Chuk. He would apparently turn up inebriated demanding food as well as drink, sometimes paying and sometimes stealing as chances permitted. He eventually ruined Chuk.

Sources for Mikhallis Laeton

There is only one surviving contemporary source for Mikhallis Laeton, and the only reference for his Irish history, by the discredited Geoffrey of Monmouth nearly 8 centuries after his era, has led modern Irish scholars to speculate he did not exist. He is mentioned obscurely by Prosper of Aquitaine as Laetonus a great war captain and by the venerable Bede as Mikhallis Laeton, in a relatively obscure and incoherent theological digression, in which he is held up as an example of warrior excess. Layton was accused of many crimes by Bede in a relatively short paragraph, including gutting the skull of a vanguished enemy and using the mouth as an outlet of the alcohol(bibi), though the meaning of the sentence has been argued. A recent Ralph magazine in Australia argued that this constituted the first known usage of a beer bong. There is no sure conviction that Laeton and Laetonus were the same person, although it seems likely, as Bede was known to have read Prosper's works, and many facts correlate. His Arian faith was ridiculed by Bede in favour of the more rigid Catholicism that declared Arianism as a heresy, and this may have biased his rather brief reference to Layton, though Bede is well known for his academic indifference on many subjects. Geoffrey of Monmouth mentions him briefly in Vita Merlini as being from Ireland. Laeton became Layton and Mikhallis became Michael in the 20th century work, Pax Brittannica which mentions the odd status of Michael Layton as a historical figure of Britain who exemplified the antithesis of civilisation of the Romans as a barbarian. A paragraph is given about his vague historiography in the Pax Britannica. The Pax Britannica, an argument against the dissolution of the British Empire throws him up as the type of barbarian that prevails when a great empire collapses, comparing him directly to the Nazis.

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