This is Berceo in a very characteristic vein, dealing with his own special saint in his chosen way—the way of the "new mastery"; and he keeps to the same rhythm in the nine hundred odd stanzas which he styles the _Milagros de Nuestra Señora_. Here his devotion inspires him to more conscientious effort; and it has been sought to show that Berceo takes his tales as he finds them in the _Miracles de la Sainte Vierge_, by the French _trouvère_, Gautier de Coinci, Prior of Vic-sur-Aisne (1177-1236). Certain it is that Gautier's source, the Soissons manuscript, was known to Alfonso the Learned, who mentions it in the sixty-first of his Galician songs as "a book full of miracles":— "_En Seixons ... un liuro a todo cheo de miragres._" There were doubtless earlier Latin collections—amongst others, Vincent de Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ and Pothon's _Liber de miraculis Sanctæ Dei Genitricis Mariæ_—which both Berceo and Alfonso used. But since Alfonso, a middle-aged man when Berceo died, knew the Soissons collection, it seems possible that Berceo also handled it. A close examination of his text converts the bare possibility into something approaching certainty. Of Berceo's twenty-five Marian legends, eighteen are given by Gautier de Coinci, whose total reaches fifty-five. This is not by itself final, for both writers might have selected them from a common source. Yet there are convincing proofs of imitation in the coincidences of thought and expression which are apparent in Gautier and Berceo. These are too numerous to be accidental; and still more weight must be given to the fact that in several cases where Gautier invents a detail of his own wit, Berceo reproduces it. Taken in conjunction with his known habit of strict adherence to his text, it follows that Berceo took Gautier for his guide. He did what all the world was doing in borrowing from the French, and in the _Virgin's Lament_ he has the candour to confess the northern supremacy.