Evertype
commented
7 years ago In my forthcoming edition of the Cornish Passion Poem, which has a palaeographic reading, I find both ih̅u(s) and ihu̅. The mark is long and often goes over both the i and the u (through the h), but sometimes is just over the u. I'm not normalizing, but I'm also not putting the mark over more than one letter (so either through the h or over the u). The MS does have an ornamental line over gh and th, though, and for those I put the mark over both g̅h̅ amd t̅h̅. The mark itself is U+0305 COMBINING OVERLINE. It is not the combining macron.
In the abbreviation for Christ, the minim is U+0365 COMBINING LATIN LETTER SMALL I, which is an abbreviation for "ir" or "ri" in Cornish, We have vͥtu "virtu", cͥſt "crist", gͥſt "grist" (mutated form)
In line 75 of the Life of Christ, there is an instance of "Ihu" with a bar between "h" and "u". The online Book of Margery Kempe uses "Ih̅u" to represent something similar to this: i.e. "h" with a macron. However, in the Laud instance, the macron seems to me to be exactly in between the "h" and the "u" (it is not a crossed "h"). Perhaps someone else should take a look and comment on my reading.
In the same line, the scribe's abbreviation of "Christ" has what appears to be a minim over the "c", for which I've used "". Again, someone should confirm this reading, and, if it is confirmed, we need to think about the use of this entity to represent the abbreviation mark since it is a Private Use character.