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St. Patrick's Day celebrations will have residents jigging, raising pints and shouting "Slainte!" as they sing along to well-known Irish tunes.

The lure of Celtic music is its vibrancy and energy, said Becky Ross of Gaithersburg, who studied classical music as a child and teenager and began playing the fiddle nearly 20 years ago on her childhood violin. Shortly afterward, her husband, Bill Mitchell, who studied piano as a child and played the baritone in high school and college, picked up playing the hammered dulcimer, an instrument with strings stretched across a sounding board. Players use small mallets to make sounds across the strings.

The pair regularly appear as Peat & Barley, performing Scottish, Irish and original music.

They play at festivals, parties, musicians' jam sessions and ceilis, or gatherings for Irish and Scottish folk dancing.

"My training was all-orchestral, serious classical music. I didn't know about folk music at all," Ross said.

She was a newlywed living in New Jersey in 1991 when her parents discovered her violin and returned it to her. She then began learning to play Irish folk music, which seemed a fun way to get reacquainted with the violin, Ross said.

"It's a lot less serious than classical music," said Ross, 51, who works full time as a musician. "Nobody cares if you're holding [the violin] the right way. And the music itself is very infectious — it makes it easy to find time to play because it's very invigorating."

She and Mitchell, 54, moved to Gaithersburg from Jobstown, N.J., in 1993. Having no social connections, they joined The Folklore Society of Greater Washington, which had a Scottish Fiddle Club.

The club held a workshop less than a mile from their home and the couple attended. They then began learning more, making friends and attending jam sessions.

Ross — a former government scientist who is president of the folklore society and teaches private lessons on the fiddle — was still a beginner. Mitchell, a mathematician at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, decided that playing the dulcimer could be fun.

"It's a fairly easy instrument to learn just to get a simple start on, but then you can spend the rest of your life learning how to do other things with it, getting better at it, finding new things you can do with it," said Mitchell, who bought a partial assembly kit and got to practicing. Today, he is a self-taught player.

"It's very satisfying to produce music, swing these hammers and have some good sounds come out of it," he said. "I think the most satisfying thing is performing and when your audience is into it, you feel very good about having made them feel good."

Peat & Barley perform once or twice a month at Celtic festivals, an annual concert in Greenbelt, summer concert series, weddings and other events. Ross also performs with other groups and pickup bands for the weekly English Dances at Glen Echo Park and plays in the colonial music group, Tasker's Chance, which performs 18th-century music in period dress.

Making music is a fun way to stay connected, the couple said.

"The way you keep a marriage healthy and fresh is by having common interests, things you do together," said Mitchell, who said he and his wife also enjoy gardening and homebrewing.

"The music just gave us another one that became a large part of what we do together," Mitchell said. "We've always had hobbies that we do together. She's my best friend."

To see a video of Peat & Barley, visit www.gazette.net. For more information or to hear more sound clips, visit the duo's Web site at www.peatandbarley.com.