Peigi, recruited by Pixar’s traditional music scout, had already received training in Gaelic singing at the local fèis, a popular activity for children with Gaelic roots. The lullaby is sung as a duet by Emma Thompson, the well-known English actress who plays the voice of Merida’s mother Queen Elinor, and Peigi Barker, a Scottish girl from Inverness who plays the young Merida. On the soundtrack, it is titled Noble Maiden Fair ( A Mhaighdean Bhan Uasal). In one scene, Princess Merida reminisces about her childhood, and we hear a touching Gaelic lullaby sung by mother and daughter.
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The Scots language emerged in Scotland in the 1200s-1500s, and Scottish English in the 1600s, much later than the Celtic languages which have been spoken in Scotland and the rest of Britain since the Iron Age.ĭespite this anachronism, the movie nods to the existence of Gaelic in Scotland, mainly through music. Scots and English belong to the Germanic family of languages, not the Celtic family. The characters in the film speak Scottish English and some Scots. But Brave, like most Hollywood movies, lacks historical accuracy when it comes to language. The movie is set in ancient Celtic Scotland we know this because there are bears, which became extinct in Scotland well over a thousand years ago.
To help you make sense of it, I’ll review the use of Gaelic in Brave from my perspective as both a linguistic anthropologist and a Gaelic speaker. The Scottish Gaelic language, a foundation of Scotland’s Celtic culture, appears here and there in the film. This also marked the first time the “Disney treatment” was given to Celtic culture. When Disney and Pixar launched the computer-animated film Brave in June 2012, the film was praised for its strong flame-haired heroine and its lush landscapes inspired by the Scottish Highlands.
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