“It is not a long journey neither is it a very expensive one, so that anyone wishing to obtain high-class stock would do well to take a trip to the Continent.”

R.L. Wallace, The Canary Book (1875)

Thus began Wallace’s advice on how to import canaries from Belgium.  He gave details of the departures, the fares, and where to stay.  He recommended the Hôtel de l’Europe in Antwerp:

“where every comfort can be procured; all waiters and servants speak English, and the charges are extremely moderate . . .  No fancier need be deterred by the fact that he is unable to speak the language of the country, as any of the waiters at the hotel I have named will readily get him an interpreter, who, on payment of a small fee, will accompany him to the different breeders, and assist him to make his purchases.” (1)

It was one such Englishman that Blakston’s ‘Special Foreign Correspondent’ (SFC) came across while visiting a show in Ghent in the mid 1870s.  He was not in a good humour:

“Ten years ago, sir, I could come over and buy in a couple of hours such birds as would astonish you now-a-days, sir, at from twenty-five to thirty-five francs each.  Now, sir, I’ve been here and in Brussels four blessed days, and I can’t come across a really good bird for love nor money . . . there’s not one really good bird in the room; they are all wastrels; there’s not one with any timber in it; timber sir, TIMBER is what we want in Lancashire”. (2)

The SFC was astonished because “that Ghent show was the show of last year, and one of my friends made an offer of one hundred and fifty francs for a buff hen a long way down the prize-list, which was refused”.  He didn’t seem to realise that the Lancastrian had not come in search of the postuurvogel, but a different type of Belgian canary altogether.  When he referred to birds with ‘timber’ he meant birds with a large, powerful build.  It was the breed that B.P. Brent had called the ‘Erect Belgian’, and which other English authors called the ‘Old Dutch’.

I will start with Brent’s account because he was the first author to describe the breed (3).  He also provided an illustration of it:

Brent’s source was an unnamed canary fancier from Sunderland who regarded himself as a ‘connoisseur of Belgian canaries’ (4).  He had seen hundreds of birds imported from Belgium, but it was not the postuurvogel that impressed him most:

“Of all the numerous varieties of canaries, I think the Erect Belgian is the handsomest.  It is many years since I first became a fancier of this beautiful variety while residing in that part of France which adjoins Belgium, and I had many opportunities of examining the collections of fanciers in that neighbourhood.

I have bred many myself, and consider them strong, hearty birds of good constitution, good breeders, and excellent singers.  Their colour is usually, almost invariably I may say, Mealy and Jonque.  They are largest variety I know, measuring in length from 7½” to 8½” (18 to 21,5 cm), and even 9” (22,5cm) from the tip of the beak to the end of the tail.  I have even heard of their measuring 10” (25cm) , but I do not vouch for the truth of such a report.

Their carriage is bold and majestic, carrying the head with a defiant air; the legs are long and moderately stout, well proportioned, and straight, yet not unnaturally so; the chest is rather full, and the feathers there form a frill; there is also a slight puff of down upon the shoulders, rump, and thighs.

Their points of excellence consist in their erect carriage, great straightness from the back of the head to the end of the tail, but without stiffness of their legs; in the compactness of their plumage; in being well proportioned; and in the general appearance of vigour and robust health.” 

We see many of the same features in a bird that Jules Jannin, whom we met in Part 2, illustrated under the name of Le Serin Hollandais (the Dutch canary) in 1852.  Curiously, Jannin does not describe it in the text, and the illustration shows the bird crouching, but its bulky form and frilling on the chest and shoulders strongly suggest that it is the same variety described by Brent. (5)

Blakston and Wallace both referred to the breed as the ‘Old Dutch’ but, as usual, disagreed in their opinion of it.  Blakston noted that “many of them compare favourably with the Lancashire Coppy in respect of size”, but otherwise he had nothing good to say:

“In shape ungainly to a degree; in position, neither upright nor anything else; in feather, rough, coarse, and disorderly to an extent that cannot be equalled for slovenliness.” (6)

Meanwhile Wallace described it as: 

“A large handsome bird, with a large full handsomely formed head, a long straight, full neck, a well shaped body of considerable length, good, substantial shoulders, broad and massive, but not elevated like a Belgian Fancy bird, a fine deep prominent chest, a good stout waist, long well-formed legs, and a long, compact sweeping tail, with a bold, erect, and noble carriage . . . They are a hardy, robust race of birds, and it seems a great pity that they have become so unpopular and neglected – indeed, so much so, that they have completely fallen into disregard, having been completely superseded by the Belgian Fancy canaries and Lancashire Coppies, the latter having originated from this breed.” (7)

That last statement was one of those few occasions when Blakston agreed, and it should be evident from the size, shape and clear yellow feathering of these birds that they were indeed one of the ancestors of the Lancashire canary.  Nevertheless, there is one glaring omission: the horseshoe shaped crest of the Lancashire Coppy.  Where did that come from?

The obvious answer was that the Erect Belgian was crossed with a crested canary.  This appears to have been a Lancastrian innovation because I have found no record of a crested version of the Erect Belgian in its homeland (8).  The introduction of the crest didn’t meet with universal approval.  A correspondent to the Kendall Mercury in 1852 insisted “the first on the list for pure blood are the plain heads, coppies being at best only half-bred, and they are bred chiefly for the beauty of their coppy” (9).  There can be little doubt that the bird he described as the ‘pure’ plain head was actually the Erect Belgian/Old Dutch canary.

The term ‘coppy’ refers to the Lancashire’s crest and is derived from the old Dutch ‘kop’ meaning ‘head’ or ‘summit’.  The breed didn’t become generally known as the Lancashire canary until the late 1870s.  Wallace had used ‘Manchester Coppy’ as the title of his chapter on the breed in 1875, but Blakston (1878) preferred ‘Lancashire Coppy’, pointing out that:

“when the term ‘Manchester’ began to come into general use, the Lancashire breeders of Oldham, Rochdale, Ashton-under-Lyne, and other towns where the bird is extensively and almost exclusively cultivated . . . entered their protest against the presumption of the title, and making out a good case, secured for the bird the name which is now becoming generally recognised”. (10)

 

The earliest show report I have found was held in Macclesfield (about 20 miles from Manchester) in 1836 (11), with classes for Plainheads and Coppies in yellow and buff.  They may have well been prototype Lancashire canaries, but terms such as ‘coppies’ and ‘toppins’ were also used for ordinary crested canaries, so how can we be confident that they were early examples of the breed?  By good fortune, a report of a canary show held in Nottingham in 1838 provides the evidence:

“ Mr. A. Clarke’s fine breed of clear Yellow and Buff Copied Canaries created great astonishment, from their amazing size, particularly the Yellow Copied, it being the largest ever before witnessed in Nottingham: it had the misfortune to break the end of two of its wing feathers, which prevented it from taking the first prize: it measured seven inches and a half in length.” (12)

This is the moment when we can be certain the Lancashire Coppy had arrived, even though it probably took decades of refinement to become the finished article.  The sudden increase in size could only have been achieved by the infusion of Erect Belgian blood.  We don’t know if Mr Clarke was the first to do so, but it does suggest that the first Erect Belgian x crested canary pairings had been a recent development, otherwise word would have got out and the ‘astonishment’ might not have been so ‘great’. 

The date of this innovation indicates that the Erect Belgian was probably the first variety of Belgian canary to be imported into Great Britain, some two decades ahead of the postuurvogel.  The recognition of the latter as the national canary of Belgium had to wait until 1877 when Blakston and the SFC set the record straight.

Despite its sensational debut on the show scene, the Lancashire canary never became a widely popular variety, for which Blakston blamed the insularity of the breeders in its home county (13).  It became another variety, like the Scots and the Belgian that had to be revived in the 20th century.  Its ancestor, the Erect Belgian/Old Dutch, was only mentioned once in Dutch texts, but not until the end of the 19th century.  Alas by then it was too late:

“One of the types of the Dutch breed, a large, heavily built bird, much like the Lancashire-bird, has completely disappeared.  In several English works he is still referred to as the ‘Old Dutch’ canary bird.  It can still be found to some extent in the large broad-headed [dikkoppige] birds that occur here and there in Brabant.”  (14)

Unlike the breeds descended from it, there would be no comeback for the Erect Belgian/Old Dutch.

Footnotes:

1. Wallace never claimed to have undertaken the journey himself, and probably relied on others for this information.  I doubt it was from a dealer because such information would undermine their trade.  One possibility is that it could have been Blakston’s SFC, but if so, Wallace did not credit him.   
2. Blakston W. A., Swaysland W., Wiener August F.,  “The Illustrated Book of Canaries and Cage-Birds”, 55 chromolithograph plates, first series published by London, Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co, 1877-81.   The SFC didn’t know what a ‘wastrel’ was.  It means a poor, weak bird.
3. B.P. Brent, ‘The Cottage Gardner and Country Gentleman’, 11 September 1860.
4. I suspect that Brent’s correspondent was R.L. Wallace who lived in Sunderland and regarded himself as an expert on Belgian canaries.  Unfortunately there is no direct evidence.
5. Jules Jannin, L’art d’élever et de multiplier les Serins Canaris et Hollandais, (first edition 1852).
6. Blakston op. cit., p.197
7. R.L. Wallace “The Canary Book, first edition 1775, pX
8. Wallace op.cit. states “The crest or ‘coppy’ has no doubt been the result of an extraneous cross with some other variety possessing this appendage, as we never remember seeing seeing a specimen of the Old Dutch canary adorned  with a crest”.
9. Anonymous letter to the Kendall Mercury, 13 November, 1852.
10. Blakston op.cit. p250.
11. Macclesfield Courier and Herald, 10 December 1836.
12. Nottingham Journal, 9 November 1838.
13. Blakston op.cit, p.250.  He states:  “[It] is essentially the most local speciality in the entire fancy, seldom travelling far from home, and still less frequently beyond the bounds of its county, to which fact alone is to be attributed its comparative want of popularity.”
14. C.L.W. Noorduyn, De Kanarie in zijn verschillende rassen (p31),1899.  The original text states:“Een der typen van het Hollandsche ras een groote zwaar gebouwde vogel veel overeenkomende met den Lancashire-vogel is geheel verdwenen. In verschillende Engelsche werken wordt hij nog aangehaald als de „Oud-Hollandsche” kanarievogel. Men vindt hem nog eenigszins terug in de hier en daar in Brabant voorkomende groote dikkoppige vogels.” The reference to “dikkoppige vogels” (broad-headed birds) is echoed by Blakston who states “A Plainhead skull, then, should be large, flat and very broad”.