Ireland, what's in a name? (Cathach, Book of Invasions, Book of Armagh, Book of the Dun Cow

The Cathach is currently seen as the oldest surviving book from Ireland. It has been dated to roughly the 6th or 7th centuries and contains the Psalms from 30:10 - 105:13. This book has been associated with Saint Columba (The Psalter of St Columba), but apparently there is doubt as to this claim. This book is currently being housed in the Royal Irish Academy (Acadamh Rioga na hEireann) or RIA and the RIA published a CD-ROM format of the book in 2002. I found a review of the CD on Medieval Academy of America (http://www.medievalacademy.org/medacnews/news_karkov.htm) and while it doesn't give an amazingly glowing review, it does indicate it is one of the better actual CDs of this genre. Unfortunately, it also leads me to believe that the translation included on the CD is also simply a translation of the Psalms and nothing much more. I will say that it appears to be reasonably priced at $40 (considering it's 58 pages of a book nearly 1500 years old).

Why did I try to find the oldest book in Ireland (or Eire, it seems, if you're from there)? I was attempting to find out when 'Ireland' (the word) was first used to describe the island. The earliest I've seen so far, is a reference in the Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabala Erren) [http://members.aol.com/lochlan2/lebor.htm] section of the Book of Leinster (Lebar na Nuachongbala), AD 1150.

A coffeetable book, The Ancient Books of Ireland by Michael Slavin, indicates two other books beyond the Cathach as important ancient books; the Book of Armagh - 9th cent (which I wrote a little about before) and the Book of the Dun Cow - 11th cent (Lebor na hUidre). I do find it interesting that two of the ancient books were held by the same family, the O'Donnells, but that could simply be coincidence. I'll do more research on that later. [Btw, The Ancient Books of Ireland shelves at the $40 price range]

After all that, the oldest reference I've found thus far to 'Eire' (named for the goddess Eriu in Old Irish) is in the Book of Invasions (roughly 1150AD), but I haven't read through either the Book of Armagh or the Book of the Dun Cow. More about those in another post.