Irish set dancing should not be confused with the high-stepping solo step dancing which originally inspired Vaudeville tap dancing and now has Riverdance and Lord of the Dance selling out venues around the world. Neither does it resemble the hoppity-skippity ceili dancing dragged out with the green beer every Saint Patrick’s Day. Set dancing is a wild country hybrid of the stately French quadrilles popular in Napoleon’s Paris which were brought to Ireland by GeneralWellington’s soldiers. One set dance of four couples in a square can last for 30 minutes, with 3-6 figures of vigorous polkas, slides, hornpipes, reels, and sweaty panting pauses in between.

In Sliabh Luachra, homeland of legendary Irish fiddlers Denis Murphy, Julia Clifford and Padraig O’Keefe, set dancing is as close to life as breathing. Local accordion master Johnny O’Leary impressed this upon me with the example of how the old blind and lame fiddle teacher Tom Billy Murphy, travelling the region on a donkey, could tell which crowd was out dancing by the battering of their feet!

“He was tee-to-tally blind, ” said Johnny, “Yet if he’d meet ye, he’d know ye forever again by yer footsteps.”

I took a crash course in Irish set dancing at Miltown Malbay, County Clare, where every July a mad traffic jam of tractors and hay balers, rental Renault and clunky Morris Minors, chip vans, caravans and donkey carts gathers for the annual Willie Clancy Summer School (Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy). Where Drowsy Maggie and the Rakish Paddy and the Lilting Banshee and the Cow That Ate the Blanket - and all the other great old Irish tunes that you can think of - blast from bagpipes, ring from fiddles, wheeze from melodeons, thunder off goatskin bodhrans at all hours godly and ungodly. And where hundreds of pairs of shoes get worn out dancing. 

Our motley group of Yanks, Germans and Aussies learning to set dance had started out hobbling and stumbling, but by week’s end were dancing as merrily as bees round a cask. Eager to test our steps on local pub floors, we sauntered out to find them so packed that the drinkers were standing on one leg like storks. So we ended up in Knock-na-Gree at Dan O’Connell’s, where I caused the wildest dancing accident that pub has ever seen.

Disrobed on the dance floor

I was dancing with one of Sliabh Luachra's best, 80-something Dan O’Keefe. His thin wide grin and soft voice still charmed “the girruls.” And oh, was he light and wiry. We were doing a Cashel set - or was it a Clare Lancers? I was twirling Dan and he was twirling me, when suddenly I felt my billowy red shirt - which one old-timer said resembled the bellows of a Paoli Soprani accordion - being yanked off me. 

My reflex was to yank back, not quite believing someone could be intent on disrobing me in a public house filled with witnesses. I gripped the elastic waistband of my skirt, but the tugs continued. Then Dan grabbed me for a swing, and while I held on to my skirt, and to Dan, I watched in stunned confusion as the dancer to my right fell toward me, while dragging his partner  bouncing  like a pogo stick on one leg. My eyes seized upon the preposterous situation: the poor man’s legs were lassoed together  - by my skirt! 

We stopped our stepping to allow him to unfurl himself. Then the cause of this queer rodeo was hanging there in plain view: nailed through the hem of my gauzy Indian skirt and tugging it off, was his partner’s high-heeled shoe.

Either the shoe had flown off the foot and the spike of the high heel had caught in my skirt. Or the skirt had caught the spiked heel and pulled it off the foot. The heel-impaled skirt  had then whirled between his legs, lassoing him like a calf, while his dance partner wondered had what happened to her shoe!  The band played on, but our set of eight was  positively crippled with laughter. 

We must have broken at least a few of the rules of ballroom etiquette described in F. J. Mainey’s The Old Time Dancers' Handbook : 

•  -Pay respectful attention of elderly persons.                                                                                                                                -It is not correct to romp in dancing.                                                                                                                               -It is not correct to exhibit any symptoms of dissatisfaction in the ballroom.     

We should add to this “Never polka in high-heel spikes.” But in Ireland, rules, if not shoes, are made to be broken.

Set dancing revival

The set dancing revival that swept Ireland and Irish America off its feet has done wonders for alcoholism, loneliness and physical fitness. While dancing, it’s impossible to drink. While dancing one gets aerobically fit whether one means to or not. While dancing to erotic hornpipes - ahh, the tangle and whirl of hair and flesh - one has the fleeting, carefully controlled chance to grab flesh, bump breast, seduce and be seduced, make eyes, make passes - and then forget that any of it ever happened. 

Dancing with someone gives you instant knowledge of that person. How confident or shy. How sensual or repressed. How generous or stingy. How lighthearted or dull. How quick-witted or thick. Happy or sad. Gawky or poised. Suspicious or trusting. How available or not. It’s amazing but true. 

One of my favorite Irish songs was composed in the 1870’s by a Galway poet named Gavin. In 1980 the Irish group The Bards added verses and popularized it as Lannigan’s Ball. It features a dancing accident rather like my own, which ended in a brawl...

The boys were as merry, the girls all hearty,  Dancin’ away in couples and groups, Till an accident happened; Young Terence McCarty He put his right leg through Miss Finnerty’s hoops…..

O’Casey the piper he nearly got strangled, They squeezed up his pipes bellows, chanters and all, The girls in their ribbons they all got entangled And that put an end to Lannigan’s Ball.