Shoe the Donkey is about as simple as folk-dancing gets. Based, as the title suggests, on the movement of an ass with a sore foot, it comprises a series of straightforward steps and turns, interrupted by the occasional hop. Michael Flatley could simultaneously perform the male and female parts of Shoe the Donkey with one leg tied behind his back.

As a professional dance teacher, Edith Bradley thought she could teach it even to me. She knows better now. An actual donkey would learn the steps quicker, although Edith, who is teaching these and many more complicated manoeuvres at the Donegal Dances Summer School this week, was too polite to say so.

Instead she kept saying things like: "It's easy. You just go: hop-one-two, hop-one-two, hop-one-two-three-turn." I'd fix this sequence in my mind, but as soon as we started moving it would get all muddled up in there, and it would come out as one-two-hop, one-two-hop, one-two-three-hop-turn instead.

Now and again I'd get overwrought and hop twice instead of stepping and the other students would snigger and I'd lose my rhythm completely and go hop-hop-hop, like a triple-jumper pulling his hamstring on take-off.

It was clear that, far from shoeing the donkey, I was having trouble distinguishing my ass from my elbow. Occasionally, I got the sequence correct but then we'd get to the turn and Edith would swing us around, and suddenly what had been the left side of the room would be on the right, and the whole thing would be mixed up again.

After 10 minutes of this, I was hopping like a cracked ping-pong ball, and Edith referred me to a specialist.

It was with some relief that I took a back seat - any seat would have done - while the teacher took her students through the Pride of Erin waltz. A "tricky little waltz" as she rightly called it, and one of an incredible 17 dances that the course participants will learn during their week in Glencolumbkille. Defeated by the dance of the lame donkey, I at least had the consolation that I wouldn't be around for The Peeler and the Goat.

A noticeable feature of the course is that, although the students were drawn from two continents and several countries, one of the main gender groups was almost entirely absent. There was one male student, and I'll come back to him in a minute, but otherwise the summer school appeared to be part of the well-known global female dancing conspiracy.

From this secret training camp in a remote corner of Donegal, these women presumably go back to their homes in Dublin or Denmark or Japan, and wait patiently for their moment of opportunity to arise. Then, at a wedding or bar mitzvah or some such occasion, the band will play a certain tune and they'll say: "I know this one - it's called Shoe the Donkey! It's really easy. All you have to do is . . "

At this point, men will be dragged protesting onto the dance floor. But at least many of them will have the advantage, unlike me in Glencolumbkille the other day, of not being fully sober during the experience. Sean Boyle, a teacher from Ramelton in North Donegal, was the said male student.

I made discreet inquiries as to whether he was being held against his will ("Nod if you're unable to talk," I whispered), but it turned out he was a voluntary participant who wanted to teach the dances in his school.

"Ramelton's a garrison town, so there's not much of a tradition there," he explained. Sean will return to Ramelton armed with the Military Two-Step, among others, and the garrison is expected to fall by Christmas.

Most of the Irish students were teachers, in fact (and it would be pure meanness to point out that they get three days off school to do this kind of thing), including one who hoped to use dance with special-needs pupils.

But the overseas participants were a more disparate body. Ss Arnskov from Copenhagen was a convert from the foreign missions of the late and legendary dance teacher, Connie Ryan; whereas Deborah Donoso from Lausanne was a regular visitor to the area who had just been sucked into the dance classes after trying other local courses like archaeology.

And, yes, there was a Japanese student, Chikage Nagura from Kobe who, having fallen in love with the landscape, is learning to speak as well as dance Irish.

The Donegal Dances course is one of the last of the year offered by Oideas Gael, the body promoting language and culture in the area.

But as late as October, you can enrol for lessons in Irish and flute-playing; while next month you can try out hill-walking or - if you really must - the bodhran.

Of course, you don't have to do any of these things to visit Glencolumbkille, with its unspoilt scenery and a rich history illustrated by ancient standing stones, some of which have better natural movement than I do.