It was more like St Vitus dance than Riverdance.

Beginners like myself go to get a stitch and humiliate themselves

Perhaps I stamped when I should have stomped. Perhaps my bodily fluidity could have been better and my toes more obedient. Perhaps my footwear let me down. Perhaps I should have had proper shoes.

But the music was marvellous, the company impossible to better and the craic (gossip) on Ireland’s Paradise Rock was unsurpassable. On the Aran islands, your feet rarely touch the ground.

Thirteen-mile-long Inishmore is the largest of the three isles of Aran, off the west coast of Galway in Ireland. It is the home of Irish set dancing and no better place is there to learn.

Dance historians go to Aran to pick up some ancient moves and traditional body shapes. Beginners like myself go there to get a stitch and humiliate themselves to music.

Everyone on Inishmore is a dancer and dances the days away. In the village halls, in Rhonda Twobles bar, at crossroads, in front of the War Memorial and even on the beach at Goirt na gCapali. Everyone is dancing.

P. J. had seen nothing like it before he saw me trying to strut my stuff at our al fresco ceilidih not far from the island’s main village at Kilronan. He looked at me in despair. As did my troupe.

My contribution to the world of dance and dance as an art form in general was hard to gauge. It was microscopic , anyway. P. J. shook his head in disbelief as he pumped out Mrs Macleod’s Reel on his squeeze-box, hoping I might, in the words of poet W. B. Yeats, finally and quite accidentally “give expression to a life not yet expressed”.

“What am I doing wrong?” I asked my fellow pupil Dave Scully from Dublin, as I executed a frenzied and rather malarial hopscotch, my body surreally out of time with the music.

“You are better not knowing,” said my partner, as the Atlantic waves crashed down around us. Aerobically, it was very satisfying. Aesthetically, it probably was not.

There are daily ferries to the Aran isles from Rossaveal harbour as well as Aer Arann plans from Connemara airport. The islands hold regular Irish set dancing masterclasses throughout the summer.

Wicklow stages a dance festival in September and Co. Mayo has one in April. When you are on the very edge of Western Europe, dancing is a good way to keep warm when you have had enough whisky.

The three islands lie off the rocky coast of Connemara and the burren limestone coast of Co Clare. Facing the open Atlantic on the west and Galway Bay to the east, the eastern island of Inisheer (Inis Thiar or Inis Oirr) is only a bilious five-mile boat ride from Doolin in County Clare.

Its most outstanding features are the 15th-century O’Brien’s Castle, built inside a much earlier cahier, or stone ring fort, and the church connected with the female saint Gobnait.

The playwright John W. Synge lived for a while on Inis Meain or Inishmaan and no doubt visited Conor Fort, the largest of all the Aran forts.

Apart from sore feet, the main souvenir from the Arans are called pampooties, which are very uncomfortable and largely unwearable hide shoes. Everyone was very concerned about my footwear when I visited Inishmore or Aranmore.

They recommended I purchased a sturdy and well-padded pair of Rutherford Flexi-Ghille walk-and-reel friendly shoes. Good for both dancing and sightseeing. And exactly what you want to walk across the seaweed and manure oat and potato fields, around the neolithic wedge tombs and the early Christian hill forts as well as up to see the view from Teampall Bheanain, the little stone oratory of St Benan.

Dun Aengus is another walk-to must-see. Perched on the edge of sheer cliffs legend suggests it was the fort of a banished Fir Bolg chieftain. It is thought to have been built about the time of Christ, although there is a debate as to whether it was built for defensive, ceremonial or merely sadistic purposes. It is a long, hard climb, no matter what your degree of fitness or choice of shoewear.

P. J. Flaherty runs the island’s two best restaurants. He is an authority on Irish set dancing and the man to know. By the age of four, he was wearing bawdier, or musicians’ breeches, and able to play all the accordion classics.

Thigh-slapping evergreens like Sally Gardens, Bird in the Bush, Dunphy’s Hornpipe, Stack of Barley and The Bluebell Polka.

Offering himself as an answer to all my Irish dancing needs and a cure-all for all my coordination problems, he told me: “ You can dance to any instrument. From a fiddle to the Uillean pipes. We’ll soon have you dancing to a tin whistle. We’ll have you doing the Dinky Dorian and the Lucy Campbell before you know it!”

Not wishing to jig before I could reel, I asked my Irish dance coach how long it would take me to master basic breath control, rudimentary postural alignment and core stability. He watched me treble and blatter for a while before saying: “Years.” And then, after pausing to correct himself, adding: “Perhaps decades.” To reduce injury, my troupe, I noticed, kept their distance.

The Connemara O’Flahertys took possession of the Ara na Naoimh, or Aran of the Saints, in the 16th century.

“St Endsa founded a monastic settlement at Killeany in about 490,” said P. J. “Many of Ireland’s great saints came to study here. People like Colmcile, Ciaran, Brendan, Fursey and Colman.”

He looked at me as if I was no saint, as I improvised some interesting new foot patterns.

“The music goes back to the 18th century and perhaps earlier,” as I staged a tactical cramp attack and let the experts to it.

Set dancing is a bonding process performed by up to eight. It unites people.

Each Irish country has its own distinctive form of dance and special steps. It’s a big subject.

Exhausted and half-crippled, we retired to The American Bar for “a drap of the Black Stuff”.

“Nothing reveals the physical exuberance and joie de vivre of Gaelic island life than its dancing,” said P. J., toasting our health. “Every day on the rock is a commemorative occasion.”

In response to my tutor’s challenge, I got up and showed him what I had learnt. I have never got so hot so quickly in my life.

My fellow pupil Dave Scully, loquacious after a few pints of Guinness, looked at me and held out a hand. “Congratulations! You are now an Aran sweater.”

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