Near-Sameness in Early Insular Metrics: Oral Ancestry and Aesthetic Potential

In this paper I determine that near-sameness, as opposed to the para- digm of sameness in Continental cultures, comprised to varying degrees a prin- ciple of poetic patterning in the Insular languages (i.e., English, Welsh, and Irish) during the initial stages of literacy in their respective societies. A move- ment toward regularizing patterns took place later under the impact of a more advanced stage of literacy, whereby near-sameness was eventually abandoned for sameness in English while becoming an obligatory feature of versification in Welsh and Irish. I show how the early Insular literatures manifest intricate pat- terns of phonological equivalence based on different forms of near-sameness. I address both the segmental and suprasegmental near-sameness that was relevant for metrical purposes in the respective cultures, such as oxytonic and paroxy- tonic cadences in Welsh and Irish and "resolutions" in English; morphological alternations in Welsh and Irish (initial mutations); and phoneme splits (due to palatalization) in Old English. I further consider whether this obvious predilec- tion for near-sameness was due to coincidence, (mutual) influence, or genetic inheritance and development ("drift").