A Monk of Fife
Various
Transcribed from the 1896 Longmans Green and Company edition by DavidPrice, email [email protected]
A MONK OF FIFEBeing the Chronicle written by Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, concerningmarvellous deeds that befell in the realm of France, in the years of ourredemption, MCCCCXXIX-XXXI. Now first done into English out of theFrench by Andrew Lang.
TO HENRIETTA LANG
My Dear Aunt,--To you, who read to me stories from the History of France,before I could read them for myself, this Chronicle is affectionatelydedicated.
Yours ever,
ANDREW LANG.
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. FelixSkene, in the series of "Historians of Scotland" (vol. vii.). To Mr.Skene's introduction and notes the curious are referred. Here it maysuffice to say that the original MS. of the Latin Chronicle is lost; thatof six known manuscript copies none is older than 1480; that two of thesecopies contain a Prologue; and that the Prologue tells us all that hashitherto 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 biddingof an unnamed Abbot of Dunfermline, who must have been Richard Bothwell,he is to abbreviate "The Great Chronicle," and "bring it up to date," aswe now say. He is to recount the events of his own time, "with certainother miraculous deeds, which I who write have had cognisance of, seen,and heard, beyond the bounds of this realm. Also, lastly, concerning acertain marvellous Maiden, who recovered the kingdom of France out of thehands of the tyrant, Henry, King of England. The aforesaid Maiden I saw,was conversant with, and was in her company in her said recovery ofFrance, and till her life's end I was ever present." After "I was everpresent" the copies add "etc.," perhaps a sign of omission. The monkishauthor probably said more about the heroine of his youth, and this thecopyists have chosen to leave out.
The author never fulfilled this promise of telling, in Latin, the historyof the Maid as her career was seen by a Scottish ally and friend. Nordid he ever explain how a Scot, and a foe of England, succeeded in beingpresent at the Maiden's martyrdom in Rouen. At least he never fulfilledhis promise, as far as any of the six Latin MSS. of his Chronicle areconcerned. Every one of these MSS.--doubtless following their incompleteoriginal--breaks off short in the middle of the second sentence ofChapter xxxii. Book xii. Here is the brief fragment which that chaptercontains:--
"In those days the Lord stirred up the spirit of a certain marvellousMaiden, born on the borders of France, in the duchy of Lorraine, and thesee of Toul, towards the Imperial territories. This Maiden her fatherand mother employed in tending sheep; daily, too, did she handle thedistaff; man's love she knew not; no sin, as it is said, was found inher, to her innocence the neighbours bore witness . . . "
Here the Latin narrative of the one man who followed Jeanne d'Arc throughgood and evil to her life's end breaks off abruptly. The author does notgive his name; even the name of the Abbot at whose command he wrote "isleft blank, as if it had been erased in the original" (Mr. Felix Skene,"Liber Pluscardensis," in the "Historians of Scotland," vii. p. 18). Itmight be guessed that the original fell into English hands between 1461and 1489, and that they blotted out the name of the author, and destroyeda most valuable record of their conqueror and their victim, Jeanne d'Arc.
Against this theory we have to set the explanation here offered by NormanLeslie, our author, in the Ratisbon Scots College's French MS., of whichthis work is a translation. Leslie never finished his Latin Chronicle,but he wrote, in French, the narrative which follows, decorating it withthe designs which Mr. Selwyn Image has carefully copied in black andwhite.
Possessing this information, we need not examine Mr. W. F. Skene'slearned but unconvincing theory that the author of the fragmentary Latinwork was one Maurice Drummond, out of the Lennox. The hypothesis is thatof Mr. W. F. Skene, and Mr. Felix Skene points out the difficulties whichbeset the opinion of his distinguished kinsman. Our Monk is a man ofFife.
As to the veracity of the following narrative, the translator finds itminutely corroborated, wherever corroboration could be expected, in thelarge mass of documents which fill the five volumes of M. Quicherat's"Proces de Jeanne d'Arc," in contemporary chronicles, and in MSS. morerecently discovered in French local or national archives. Thus CharlotteBoucher, Barthelemy Barrette, Noiroufle, the Scottish painter, and hisdaughter Elliot, Capdorat, ay, even Thomas Scott, the King's Messenger,were all real living people, traces of whose existence, with some oftheir adventures, survive faintly in brown old manuscripts. Louis deCoutes, the pretty page of the Maid, a boy of fourteen, may have beenhardly judged by Norman Leslie, but he certainly abandoned Jeanne d'Arcat her first failure.
So, after explaining the true position and character of our monkishauthor and artist, we leave his book to the judgment which it has tarriedfor so long.
