The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Monk of Fife, by Andrew Lang

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Title: A Monk of Fife
Being the chronicle written by Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, concerning
marvellous deeds that befell in the realm of France, in the years of
our redemption, MCCCCXXIX-XXXI. Now first done into English out of
the French

Author: Andrew Lang

Release Date: April 7, 2005 [eBook #1631]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MONK OF FIFE***

Transcribed from the 1896 Longmans Green and Company edition by David
Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

A MONK OF FIFE
Being the Chronicle written by Norman Leslie of Pitcullo, concerning
marvellous deeds that befell in the realm of France, in the years of our
redemption, MCCCCXXIX-XXXI. Now first done into English out of the
French 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 affectionately
dedicated.

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. 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, beyon