SO I LEFT MY HEART; IN LISDOONVARNA

BECAUSE no word existed to convey the particular sense of esprit produced by the confluence of drink, romance and music, the Irish invented the term "craic" (pronounced "crack"); and had no place existed devoted utterly and unashamedly to craic, then they would also have invented Lisdoonvarna.

You creep in from the fat midlands, by Thoor Ballylee where Yeats had his tower, into a suddenly hushed landscape of stone walls, ruined castles and a sense of time arrested. This is the Burren, a place of unique beauty, where alpine gentians can be found in crevices of volcanic rock and where the pounding Atlantic is a natural part of the race memory. The towns' names themselves might be fragments from a poet's work-in-progress: Tubber, Boston, Aglish. Corofin, Kilfenora. Lisdoonvarna.

It's 11am on a drizzly Saturday. The bell rings out for mass, but there are few takers. An accordionist on the back-lit stage of a pub is pumping away to a dozen men whose general air is one of recovery. Welcome to the singles capital of Europe.

It's a place with a frontier feel about it, a spa town, a narrow strip rising up over a hill with a healing well at one end and a Catholic church at the other. When the bus from Ennis comes through during the season there is gridlock for 20 minutes. By "the season" is meant the month of September and the first bit of October, when in a tradition etched in the Irish psyche, farmers, their harvests saved, have for years arrived in the ebbing light to secure the final necessity for winter: a woman. Around this custom has grown a festival devoted to matchmaking, or put more plainly, to finding a mate.

The pubs and hotels all take their names from the great age of Victorian touring: Savoy, Imperial, Royal, Ritz. The chintzy lounges and vestibules are time-warps of pre-NAF respectability. "Don't expect to sleep," a German visitor is warned as he is allocated a room in the Hydro for pounds 67.50. "People dance all night."

In the middle of town there's a pub called The Matchmaker, and though you do hear of people who come here and employ a broker to do the business for them, evidence is hard to come by. "Willie Daly has me on his books," laughs Marge Sumodi, a merry widow from Cleveland, Ohio. "He told me he knows a nice fellow who would suit me just fine."

The existence of matchmakers is important. They lend a certain respectability to the whole business of Lisdoonvarna, for if there is a matchmaker then the ultimate object must be a marriage - and in an extremely conservative and overwhelmingly Catholic Irish country town, that throws a veil over what is really shifting, just about.

Another peal of bells, this time for noon, and something of a stirring is taking place. Suddenly live music blares from every premises, while simultaneously a movement of people has begun: countrymen in dark suits, brown shoes, collars and ties, women wearing costume jewellery, young lads in open-necked shirts. It's as if the Angelus, the prayer bell, has finally shaken them into the street. At the bottom of a stony, zig-zag path is the municipally owned spa. It may well be that glasses of iron water and sulphur baths are the raison d'etre of this operation, but now, though it's just noon, there's a dance involving 200 enthusiasts going full-swing.

"Jasus!" gasps Christine, a mischievous little woman of at least 50, as she pauses to draw breath. "My husband?" She wiggles her hips. "God help him, at home with a chest infection." She links closer to a man dressed as if for his daughter's wedding, then winks. "We were in a pub this summer when this gorgeous fellow asked me up to dance. The look my old man gave me! I asked him, I said, 'When I married you, did I sign a contract saying I wouldn't dance?'"

This venue is known as "the first chance of the day". The women here range from late teens into the blue-rinse yonder, but the young lions must still be getting tanked up in town because many of the men on the Spa dance floor look of an age where sex will soon only mean something in which you find potatoes.

"I met this 82-year-old gentleman last night," says Teresa, a motherly barmaid from Liverpool with hair like an avalanche of carrot puree. "I asked him what he'd been before he retired, and he said, 'Darling, what would you like me to have been?'"

The number over, the women return to their seats and the men step out once more in a never-ending selection process. It is said that men come here looking for a woman to nurse them in old age, while what the women have in mind is a man with a long pocket and a short cough.

"There aren't many places I know of where people my age can go for craic," says Jeff, who left Ireland 20 years ago and now farms in Christchurch, New Zealand. "This is a great little country, you know." Some people retire for a breather in a sulphur bath before heading for the next venue; the dancing continues non-stop, moving from one location to another, beginning at the Spa and going on until the last second of craic has been flogged from the coming night.

Lunch, as befits a town devoted to cavorting, takes place on the hoof: the crowd moves from the Spa up through the town, leaving in its wake empty soup bowls, sandwich crusts and the odd toothstripped T-bone, before walking the final two miles to the dance at Ballinalacken Castle.

Lisdoonvarna's western outskirts are home to the b&bs, all with signs stating "No vacancies", with names like "Moher" (after the nearby cliffs) or "Roncalli" (after Pope John XXIII). The Burren Castle Hotel, standing in flatlands looking west, is like a cardboard mock-up from the Cornflake- packet school of architecture. But persist with the flow of eager cars and you reach the top of a hill where the natural beauty of west Clare, with its views of the Atlantic and the Aran Islands, emphasises the contrast between the landscape and the gaudy spa town.

"What spa?" asks Denis, a shop assistant from Leitrim who looks as if he has been born with a pint in his hand. "I heard nothing about a spa. Is there any craic down there?"

The juices are really moving now in Ballinalacken Castle. The crossover to craic proper has taken place and the rest is pure nirvana in the waiting. The bandleader calls "The Siege of Ennis", and within 20 seconds every inch of the dance floor is taken.

"My family's Irish," says Dona Callahan, a vivacious divorcee, from the mid-western United States. "Originally we spelt our name Callaghan but we've lost our 'g'." Dona pauses as a pair of young farmers come squeezing past. "I'll tell you something," she giggles. "I've lost a lot more than my 'g' since I got here."

It's still drizzling outside and nearly dark. Back in the Hydro, Sky News is unfolding another chapter in the Mrs Will Carling story to a group of ladies who are perhaps familiar with Mrs Carling's situation.

"It's a glorified cattle-mart, really," says Bob from Fulham as he watches a couple of zesty matrons twirling together to a three-piece combo. "It's a game. Everyone here knows that. But in the back of your mind, though it's all fun, you're thinking unconsciously that everyone is available. I'm 56. I'm here for fun. It'll be a bonus if I find the right person."

Some people obviously have, strolling hand in hand to Cupid's Nite Club, or in the general direction of the town's speed limits where the street lights intrude less. And as in every bar in every town in all the world, there are those who have not.

"I've had propositions but not proposals," says Marilee from Sligo, standing outside the Hydro which is dripping like a giant pavlova. "You can tell the married men from the way they're dressed. That's not what I came here for. At my age you have to think of the future."

Jeff is outside the Savoy, yawning, looking at his watch. "Maybe some day I'll get lucky. It's still a relief from life back home. I mean, you don't meet too many people between the refrigerator and the TV set."

Behind Jeff they're settling in for a very, very long night. The type of man who puts on women's hats at weddings is in evidence, but females are suddenly thin on the ground. You get the impression that any business that was to be done is now over.

An old pair are nodding off but still holding hands in the hall of the Imperial Hotel. Their ring fingers are heavily committed to precious stones and bands of gold. "Met her here 47 years ago," proclaims Ned, who genuinely looks how you'd want to look if you were over 80. "Bring her back every year. Wouldn't miss it."

"He stole my heart here," blinks his wife, and all of a sudden you wish you will be as lucky.

A half moon climbs over the Burren. From a height outside the town the Atlantic can be seen, beautiful and romantic, beyond the neon and the glitz. Lisdoonvarna is offering you a choice of many worlds: a secret week of craic with someone of a certain age, or tea dances at noon in a clattery spa, or perhaps the chance to meet someone on whom you might look back in time and say, "I met her here and she stole my heart".

Up the main street, accompanied by a buzz of radio static, strolls a pleasant-faced, uniformed guard.

"Do people ever go to bed here?" I ask him. He smiles. "Yes. Around the end of the first week in October." !

TRAVEL NOTES

GETTING THERE: Fly to Shannon from Heathrow from pounds 79 return with Aer Lingus (0645 737747). Midweek flights with Ryan Air (0172 4357101) from Stansted to Dublin cost pounds 55 and to Cork pounds 69. The return rail fare to Galway from London Euston (0171-834 2345) is pounds 61, the coach fare from Victoria with Euroline (0171-730 8235) pounds 49. Crossings from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire with Stena Sealink (01233 647047) cost pounds 178 by ferry or pounds 198 by catamaran. Prices are for a car and up to five passengers.

CAR HIRE: All three main airports have Budget offices (0800 181181), with prices starting at pounds 184 per week.

FURTHER INFORMATION: The Irish Tourist Board, 150 New Bond Street, London W1Y 0AQ.