A Monk of Fife

It is not of my own will nor for my own glory that I Norman Leslie sometime of Pitcullo and in religion called Brother Norman of the Order of Benedictines of Dunfermline indite this book. But on my coming out of France in the year of our Lord One thousand four hundred and fifty-nine it was laid on me by my Superior Richard Abbot in Dunfermline that I should abbreviate the Great Chronicle of Scotland and continue the same down to our own time. {1} He bade me tell moreover all that I knew of the glorious Maid of France called Jeanne la Pucelle in whose company I was from her beginning even till her end. Obedient therefore to my Superior I wrote in this our cell of Pluscarden a Latin book containing the histories of times past but when I came to tell of matters wherein as Maro says pars magna fui I grew weary of such rude barbarous Latin as alone I am skilled to indite for of the manner Ciceronian as it is now practised by clerks of Italy I am not master: my book therefore I left unfinished breaking off in the middle of a sentence.