A Monk of Fife | Page 3

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This etext was prepared from the 1896 Longmans Green and Company
edition by David Price, email [email protected]

A MONK OF FIFE

PREFACE

Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, whose narrative the reader has in his hands,
refers more than once to his unfinished Latin Chronicle. That work,
usually known as "The Book of Pluscarden," has been edited by Mr.
Felix Skene, in the series of "Historians of Scotland" (vol. vii.). To Mr.
Skene's introduction and notes the curious are referred. Here it may
suffice to say that the original MS. of the Latin Chronicle is lost; that of
six known manuscript copies none is older than 1480; that two of these
copies contain a Prologue; and that the Prologue tells us all that has
hitherto been known about the author.

The date of the lost Latin original is 1461, as the author himself avers.
He also, in his Prologue, states the purpose of his work. At the bidding
of an unnamed Abbot of Dunfermline, who must have been Richard
Bothwell, he is to abbreviate "The Great Chronicle," and "bring it up to
date," as we now say. He is to recount the events of his own time, "with
certain other miraculous deeds, which I who write have had cognisance
of, seen, and heard, beyond the bounds of this realm. Also, lastly,
concerning a certain marvellous Maiden, who recovered the kingdom
of France out of the hands of the tyrant, Henry, King of England. The
aforesaid Maiden I saw, was conversant with, and was in her company
in her said recovery of France, and till her life's end I was ever
present." After "I was ever present" the copies add "etc.," perhaps a
sign of omission. The monkish author probably said more about the
heroine of his youth, and this the copyists have chosen to leave out.
The author never fulfilled this promise of telling, in Latin, the history
of the Maid as her career was seen by a Scottish ally and friend. Nor
did he ever explain how a Scot, and a foe of England, succeeded in
being present at the Maiden's martyrdom in Rouen. At least he never
fulfilled his promise, as far as any of the six Latin MSS. of his
Chronicle are concerned. Every one of these MSS.-- doubtless
following their incomplete original--breaks off short in the middle of
the second sentence of
Chapter xxxii
. Book xii. Here is the brief fragment which that chapter contains:-
"In those days the Lord stirred up the spirit of a certain marvellous
Maiden, born on the borders of France, in the duchy of Lorraine, and
the see of Toul, towards the Imperial territories. This Maiden her father
and mother employed in tending sheep; daily, too, did she handle the
distaff; man's love she knew not; no sin, as it is said, was found in her,
to her innocence the neighbours bore witness . . . "
Here the Latin narrative of the one man who followed Jeanne d'Arc
through good and evil to her life's end breaks off abruptly. The author
does not give his name; even the name of the Abbot at whose command
he wrote "is left blank, as if it had been erased in the original" (Mr.
Felix Skene, "Liber Pluscardensis," in the "Historians of Scotland," vii.
p. 18). It might be guessed that the original fell into English hands

between 1461 and 1489, and that they blotted out the name of the
author, and destroyed a most valuable record of their conqueror and
their victim, Jeanne d'Arc.
Against this theory we have to set the explanation here offered by
Norman Leslie, our author, in the Ratisbon Scots College's French MS.,
of which this work is a translation. Leslie never finished his Latin
Chronicle, but