Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Goranus, Gabhran
GORANUS, GABHRAN (538–560?), king of Scotland, was the son of Domgardus (Domangart), son of Fergus Mor MacEarc, and is reckoned as the forty-fifth king of Scotland according to the fictitious chronology of Fordun and Buchanan, but, according to the rectified chronology of Father Innes and Mr. Skene, was fourth king of the kingdom of Dalriada, founded by his grandfather Fergus in 503. He succeeded his brother Congallus I [q. v.] in 538 (Tigernach), and is called, as his father and brother also are, Ri Albain, which may imply, as Skene suggests, that during their reigns the Dalriad kingdom had extended beyond its original bounds in Argyle and the isles. Buchanan gives, following Fordoun, a full but unreliable account of the events of the reign of Goranus, whom he makes the ally of Loth, king of the Picts, the eponymus of Lothian and the contemporary of Arthur. But almost all we really know of it is the brief notice of Tigernach in the year 560, when he records the death of Gabhran, king of Alban, and the flight of the men of Alban before Brude MacMailchon, king of the Cruithnigh (Picts). He was succeeded in Dalriada by Conall son of Congallus, his brother, who reigned till 574, when Aidan, Gabhran's younger son, was inaugurated king at Iona by St. Columba, in preference to his elder brother Eoganan, and through the influence of Columba obtained the recognition at the Council of Drumceat (515) of the independence of Scottish Dalriada from tribute formerly exacted by Irish Dalriada, although the Scots were to continue to assist the parent stock in war. From this king the Cinal (or tribe) Gabhran, one of the three powerfuls, i.e. powerful tribes, of Dalriada who occupied Kintyre, Cowall, and several islands on the coast of Argyle, derived its name. The other two were the Cinal Loarn in Lorn, and the Cinal Angus in Isla.
[Innes's Critical Essay on the Ancient Inhabitants of Scotland; Skene's Chronicles of Picts and Scots, and Celtic Scotland, vol. i.; Reeves's Adamnan.]