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A Monk of Fife - Andrew Lang - zip
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 he wrote, in French, the narrative which
follows, decorating it with the designs which Mr. Selwyn Image has
carefully copied in black and white.
Possessing this information, we need not examine Mr. W. F. Skene's
learned but unconvincing theory that the author of the fragmentary
Latin work was one Maurice Drummond, out of the Lennox. The
hypothesis is that of Mr. W. F. Skene, and Mr. Felix Skene points
out the difficulties which beset the opinion of his distinguished
kinsman. Our Monk is a man of Fife.
As to the veracity of the following narrative, the translator finds
it minutely corroborated, wherever corroboration could be expected,
in the large mass of documents which fill the five volumes of M.
Quicherat's "Proces de Jeanne d'Arc," in contemporary chronicles,
and in MSS. more recently discovered in French local or national
archives. Thus Charlotte Boucher, Barthelemy Barrette, Noiroufle,
the Scottish painter, and his daughter Elliot, Capdorat, ay, even
Thomas Scott, the King's Messenger, were all real living people,
traces of whose existence, with some of their adventures, survive
faintly in brown old manuscripts. Louis de Coutes, the pretty page
of the Maid, a boy of fourteen, may have been hardly judged by
Norman Leslie, but he certainly abandoned Jeanne d'Arc at her first
failure.
So, after explaining the true position and character of our monkish
author and artist, we leave his book to the judgment which it has
tarried for so long.
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