Loarn mac Eirc was a possible king of Dál Riata who may have lived in the 5th century. He was buried on Iona.[1] Loarn's main significance is as the eponymous ancestor of Cenél Loairn, a kindred whose name is preserved in Lorne.

The Duan Albanach and the Senchus Fer n-Alban and other genealogies name Loarn's father as Erc son of Eochaid Muinremuir. Loarn appears in Irish traditions as 'King of Alba' in the eighth- to twelfth-century tale "Of The Miracles of Cairnech Here" in the Lebhor Bretnach, the Irish version of the Historia Brittonum, and in the tenth- to twelfth-century tale Aided Muirchertach mac Erca. In these tales, mac Erca spends time with Loarn, his grandfather, before murdering him by setting him aflame.

Notes

  1. ^ J. M. P. Calise, Pictish sourcebook, Greenwood Press, 2002.

References

  • Bannerman, John, Studies in the History of Dalriada. Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh, 1974. ISBN 0-7011-2040-1
  • Pestano,Dane, King Arthur in Irish Pseudo-Historical Tradition - An Introduction. Dark Age Arthurian Books, 2011. ISBN 978-0-9570002-0-9
  • Broun, Dauvit, The Irish Identity of the Kingdom of the Scots in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Boydell, Woodbridge, 1999. ISBN 0-85115-375-5
  • Menzies, Gordon (ed) (1971) Who are the Scots: A search for the origins of the Scottish nation. BBC.
  • Woolf, Alex, From Pictland to Alba, 789-1070 Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
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