Harald, Obvioussly as amember of this list I am a lyric feind but I feel that If you don't have a good canvas than your painting is going to suffer. I think a good way at becoming a good guitar player (or whatever you play) is by arranging songs as instrumentals. Once you have a good backdrop then add the words to the picture and tweak it till you recieve the desired effect. How many times have you heard someone with an upbeat (and out of place) arrangement to a sad song. It just doesn't work. Here is a URL for an article I wrote on good Celtic Fingerstyle/flatpicking guitarists. It should be up at the Ceolas website in a few days (the server crashed). It is a good intro to Celtic guitar. I would also suggest some slack key guitar music from Hawaii (anything on Dancing Cat Records) or anything by Madagascan guitarist D'Gary (shanachie records) for inspiration.

Cliff PS: Here is the URL http://celtic.stanford.edu/instruments/celtic_guitar.html