Still, some parts of Canada are considered musicologically "core Celtic", in that you don't get to ignore them if you're looking at Celtic fiddle tunes and you know that "Celtic" is not a synonyn for "Irish". Canadian Celtic music gets included in the Celtic repertoire more often than Spanish Celtic does, despite how wickedcool Galician bagpipe music is.

But yeah, there is that Scottish reputation for love songs in which people die. And there's also the murder ballads -- Trix likes to put one of those into most Homespun Ceilidh Band (http://www.homespunceilidh.com) concerts. Do you know "Marrowbones"? At least that one can be thought of as cheery in a way...