<div style="float: right; margin: .5em; padding: 1em; width: 250px; border: solid 1px gray; background-color: white;">Fourth stanza, explaining how Jesus was born of Mary to save sinners: **O Maria, Deu maire** ("O Mary, mother of God") is an [Old Occitan](https://bliptext.com/articles/old-occitan) song, a [hymn to the Virgin Mary](https://bliptext.com/articles/marian-hymn), unique in being both the only song from the [Saint Martial school](https://bliptext.com/articles/saint-martial-school) (the [chantry](https://bliptext.com/articles/chantry) of the [Abbey of Saint Martial](https://bliptext.com/articles/abbey-of-saint-martial-limoges) at [Limoges](https://bliptext.com/articles/limoges)) that is entirely in the vernacular (having no [Latin](https://bliptext.com/articles/medieval-latin) stanza or refrain) and the only medieval Occitan song with extant [musical notation](https://bliptext.com/articles/musical-notation) for all its (twelve) stanzas. It dates to the 1090s and is preserved in [MS](https://bliptext.com/articles/manuscript) f. lat. 1139 of the [Bibliothèque nationale de France](https://bliptext.com/articles/biblioth-que-nationale-de-france). It has been translated into English. A [liturgical](https://bliptext.com/articles/liturgical) song, O Maria was designed to communicate sacred truth to the people in a language they could understand, although usually this was done through a mixture of Latin and vernacular verses. The melody of the piece basically repeats for each stanza with only minor variations. The later songs of the [troubadours](https://bliptext.com/articles/troubadour), composed in the same style, were never transcribed with more than one stanza of music. It has been suggested that, like O Maria, subsequent stanzas were melodically similar with only minor variations. Similarities have been drawn between the music of O Maria and that of a ninth-century hymn to the Virgin, Ave maris stella ("Hail, star of the sea"), and also between O Maria and Reis glorios, verais lums e clardatz ("Glorious King, true light and brilliance"), an [alba](https://bliptext.com/articles/alba-poetry) by the troubadour [Guiraut de Bornelh](https://bliptext.com/articles/guiraut-de-bornelh) (fl.c.1200). The latter may be a [contrafactum](https://bliptext.com/articles/contrafactum) or just a metrical imitation, although its words cannot be presumed to have any similar religious significance.