Animal skins define the boundary between the history and prehistory of Western Europe. Transformed into parchment, they have become the main support of our knowledge of the pre-modern culture of Western Europe. It was the most used and best preserved writing material in Europe before the fragmentary adoption of paper in the late Middle Ages and early modern era. Both members of the European project Beast to craft, researchers Elodie Lévêque and Alberto Campagnolo studied and analysed the binding of the most famous manuscript preserved in the Simone Veil de Valenciennes media library, the Cantilène de Sainte Eulalie, the first poem in French. Scoop in perspective!