by Kevin MacLean (Fortress of Lugh)
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The Gaelic language almost certainly developed along a continuous zone which stretched across both Ireland and Scotland in the late Bronze Age.
Pictish represents a third archaic form of Celtic which was somewhere in between Gaelic and Brythonic, the main British Celtic language.
The only Pictish word recorded by Bede was the place-name, Peanfahel, a place along the Antoine Wall. The name means, Wall’s End. While ‘Pean’ is a Brythonic form, meaning ‘head, end’, ‘fahel’ is not a Brythonic form.
‘Fahel‘ is very likely a cognate with Welsh gwal, ‘wall’, and Gaelic, fàl, ‘hedge, fence, enclosure’ and a cognate with Latin vallum.
In either case, the sound development of Pictish ‘fahel’ shows it to be closer to the Gaelic form. The ‘H’ is used in the spelling in part represents an elongated vowel sound. The name Peanfahel is recorded also in a Brythonic form, Penguaul, and also a Gaelic form, Cennfàil.
The Gaelic form, other than the initial ‘P’ instead of ‘C’ is the nearly exact same sound as the Pictish form, while the Brythonic form not only varies in vowels but changes an ‘F’ for a ‘G’.
In Old Celtic, spoken across Europe, there were initial ‘W’ sounds. For instance, proto-Celtic *wiros ‘man’ becomes Old Gaelic *fer but Welsh *gwr. Some surviving Pictish name lists seem to show that it did not follow either. Gaelic ‘Fergus’ was Pictish Urgust. If so, Gaelic fál and Welsh gwal should be Pictish ‘ual/wal’.
So, either at this stage in the Pictish language the initial ‘U’ or ‘W’ was shifting to ‘F’ under Gaelic influence, or the form is purely borrowed from Gaelic, which would show Gaelic presence and influence in the Edinburgh region as of the 7th century.
