From the Emerald Isle

On a recent Friday evening, Nita Conley Korn and her daughter Eileen Estes warmed Shamrock Restaurant, near Thurmont, with songs of Ireland — ballads of heroism and lost love, reels and jigs.

Korn, of Pleasant Valley, said the music and culture of Ireland has always filled her life, not just on St. Patrick's Day but year-round, stemming from the roots of her being.

Irish heritage

Korn's grandfather was a fiddle player from Mayo, Ireland, and her father took up the fiddle too. Korn embraced the family's heritage of Irish music, dance and food, and passed that on to her own three children.

"My grandfather and my father were into the instrumental music," she said. "I am more interested in collecting and preserving traditional songs than performing."

Korn said her grandfather was also a great storyteller. "He would tell us all the Irish stories. At Halloween he would hang up sheets and create the banshee and blow on a conch shell. He would make weird, eerie sounds. The kids thought it was really fun," she said. "With my kids, I shared the stories that my grandfather told."

Traditions inspire life

The traditions she was raised with led Korn to become a voice major at Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College, in the early 1970s.

"I did a research project and then an internship with the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Songs," she said of those days. "Through that, I got interested in researching the traditional songs. I went to Ireland and Scotland to collect folk songs from the area. I brought them back and when I married I taught them to my kids. Singing has always been a part of our family."

Korn said when she was a young woman she belonged to the Emerald Isle Club. On Sunday nights they met at an Irish restaurant in Baltimore to sing. For many years she was a member of the band Celtic Thunder, singing and playing Irish music in bars and for Ceili dances that she described as "group dances similar to square dancing or folk dancing." There, she would accompany fiddle tunes on piano. "These were the tunes I learned from my grandfather and father," she said.

After college, Korn because a music teacher at Kenwood High School in Baltimore. She taught part time at various Baltimore county schools while her children were small and then spent 10 years as a music teacher at Francis Scott Key High School.

A student Korn had taught in the late '70s arrived at Shamrock Restaurant with his fiddle, surprising Korn.

"I absolutely adore Nita because she got me started in Celtic music many, many years ago," said Drew Vervan, of Silver Run. "This is the first time we've played music together since then."

Vervan said he and his former teacher made contact a few years ago on Facebook and she'd invited him to drop in to play one day.

"Ever since she got me turned on to it, I have been chasing the Celtic music thing," Vervan said. "I was so obsessed with the music that I went and lived in Ireland for a while, immersing myself fully in it."

Serving Irish fare

Korn credits her father's side of the family with the music traditions she passed on to her students and her family. "My grandmother, who was on the McKinney side, had all the good Irish recipes," Korn said, naming cottage pudding as one.

"Until recently, the Irish weren't big on desserts, unless fresh fruit or berries were in it," she said. "There wasn't a lot of fresh fruit or vegetables available in Ireland for many years. So they ate a lot of currant cakes and puddings. Soda bread was big, too, because yeast was not readily available."

Korn said she cooks colcannon for her family, a meal of mashed-up potatoes and cabbage and leeks. "If you have kale you can throw that in, too," she said.

Tradition goes forward

"I don't think I ever didn't know I had an Irish heritage," Estes said. "It wasn't something that my mom made a big deal of emphasizing. It was just a part of our lives. I think I started learning all the set dances when I was about 4. I took a step dancing class for about a year or two, when I was about 6.

Estes said of all the Irish traditions they embraced, music rose to the top.

"When our whole family does a ballad, we have these beautiful four-part harmonies with my brothers," Estes said, naming one of her favorites, "Red as a Rose."

"At family gatherings everybody sings, even the grandkids. Those moments are rare, but when they happen it is beautiful," she said. "Sometimes we will be doing dishes after a family meal at my parents' house and my brothers and I will just break into song."

Music became so important to Estes that she followed in her mother's teaching footsteps. While her young family lived in Charlottesville, Va., Estes taught music at the Blue Ridge Irish Music School. She moved to Frederick in February when her husband's job brought them back to Maryland.

Korn and Estes both teach Irish singing classes at the Music, Art and Dance week held each July near Washington, D.C., by the Washington/Malcom-O'Neil branch of Comhaltas Ceoltiori Eireann. The sponsoring association has a goal of preserving traditional Irish music.

Korn, who has eight grandchildren and two more on the way, said she loves singing to them, mostly the Irish ditties written for children. "These are the songs you sing when bouncing them on your knee," she said.

"When we were young my mom sang all the time, when she cooked or when she cleaned," said Estes. "I learned ballads when I was young. She'd sing 'Eileen Aroon' to me or 'The Verdant Braes of Skreen.' One of the reasons I fell in love with it was because it was always around and because that sort of music is easy to love, not because it was expected."

Being Irish

"My mom did more than just put us in green sweaters on St. Paddy's day and dye food green," Estes said. "And when we were in college me and my brothers did more than drink green beer on that day. Being uniquely Irish is about community, not about everyone getting sloshed on green beer. Whether it is making music together or sharing a meal, it is about good people and good community, about being inclusive, welcoming and hospitable."

"The Irish traditions are something to pass on," Korn said. "It gives your family something unique to hang onto that is their own."

Sharing recipes

Here are a couple of recipes, shared by Nita Korn, that bring Ireland to the table.

Colcannon

1 ½ pounds potatoes (peeled and cut into small pieces)

1 ½ cup milk

1 bunch of leeks, cleaned and chopped

1 ½ cup cabbage or kale, steamed

4 tablespoons butter

Cook and drain potatoes.

Heat butter in a separate pan. Add leeks and cook until leeks are soft.

Add milk and heat until milk is warm.

Add warm milk, butter and leeks to drained potatoes and mash.

Mash in cabbage or kale.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Put in a warm dish, make a well in the center and add a few more pats of butter. Garnish with parsley.

Cottage pudding

1 quart berries (blueberry, blackberry, raspberry) rinsed. Add ½ cup sugar and mix in. Set aside.

3 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 stick of butter

¾ cup sugar

1 egg

¾ to 1 cup milk (enough to make it sticky)

Cut butter into flour sifted with salt and baking soda. Stir in sugar.

Add egg and stir in enough milk to make a sticky paste.

Arrange berries in a buttered dish.

Spoon mounds of dough on top of berries.

Bake at 350 degrees about 30 minutes, until topping is brown and crisp. Make sure it is cooked through by testing with a toothpick or slim knife. Allow to cool. Serve with fresh whipped cream.