The parent house in France, the Priory of Vallis Caulium, had been founded just over thirty years earlier and the original brethren from France must surely have found in Pluscarden, an echo of their own situation, lying in a deeply wooded valley in Burgundy, nestling at the foot of a steep and densely forested hill.

In fact an old name for the Pluscarden valley, the Kail Glen, is nothing more than a translation into Scots of the French Val des Choux or the Latin Vallis Caulium.

Pluscarden Priory lies six miles south west of Elgin, Morayshire and was one of the most important ecclesiastical foundations in Morayshire. Pluscarden reflects the preference of King Alexander II in 1230 for the Valliscaulians, a somewhat recondite French order which also had houses in the Highlands at Beauly, Ross-shire, and Ardchattan, Argyllshire. These represented the only houses of that order to be found anywhere in Great Britain. The Valliscaullian order had been founded in the Val des Choux [Valley of the Cabbages] around 1200, and shared the strictness of the Carthusians and the fellowship of the Benedictines .

Pluscarden Priory has the tradition that a ring found at the Priory had been given to a monk by Joan of Arc before her being burned as a witch. The monk later found his way to Pluscarden bringing the ring.

 "The Ring of the Maid, inscribed with the Holy Names, is often referred to in her Trial ("Proces," i. 86, 103, 185, 236, 238), and is mentioned by Bower, the contemporary Scottish chronicler ("Proces," iv. 480), whose work was continued in the "Liber Pluscardensis." We have also, in the text, Norman's statement that a copy of this ring was presented by the Maid to Elliot Hume. While correcting the proof-sheets of this Chronicle, the Translator received from Mr. George Black, Assistant Keeper of the National Museum of Antiquities in Edinburgh, a copy of his essay on "Scottish Charms and Amulets" ("Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland," May 8, 1893, p. 488). There, to his astonishment, the Translator read: "The formula MARI. IHS. occurs on two finger-rings of silver-gilt, one of which was found at Pluscarden, Elginshire, and the other in an old graveyard near Fintray House, Aberdeenshire." Have we in the Pluscarden ring a relic of the Monk of Pluscarden, the companion of Jeanne d'Arc, the author of "Liber Pluscardensis"?