def xpathNextPreceding(self, cur):
        """Traversal function for the "preceding" direction the
          preceding axis contains all nodes in the same document as
          the context node that are before the context node in
          document order, excluding any ancestors and excluding
          attribute nodes and namespace nodes; the nodes are ordered
           in reverse document order """
        if cur is None: cur__o = None
        else: cur__o = cur._o
        ret = libxml2mod.xmlXPathNextPreceding(self._o, cur__o)
        if ret is None:raise xpathError('xmlXPathNextPreceding() failed')
        __tmp = xmlNode(_obj=ret)
        return __tmp