Insular Latin idama, iduma

Abstract

This paper treats of the origin and use of Insular Latin idama, iduma ‘hand’. It occurs in Altus Prosator, a poem composed probably about the middle of the seventh century. The central word of a central line of its central stanza, spelled idama in all four of the oldest extant manuscripts, from the ninth and tenth centuries, correctly represents the קמץ, the vowel a, of ידם yadaim, the dual form of יד yad ‘hand’. As open-topped a is easily confused with u in Insular minuscule script, the word is spelled iduma in three eleventh-century manuscripts, one of which glosses it correctly as manus and derives it correctly from Hebrew. In the form iduma it appears in Laidcenn’s Lorica and in the Hisperica Famina, in which it is also glossed correctly. It is used in English charters of the tenth and (possibly) eleventh centuries in the same sense as in Altus Prosator.