Chapter by chapter, vintage books give us a bird’s eye view of the past
◆ There is a tradition of miners raising canaries and my uncle is one of them
I’ll do audio books but for me there’s nothing like the paper version, the heft of them in your hand and the whisper of a turning page, and best of all are old hardbacks with their aroma of leather and linen, dust and damp.
Lack of space and family tragedy (my uncle’s ceiling collapsed on account of the weight of his books in the attic) mean I rein myself in but passing a charity shop in Edinburgh’s Leith Walk my eye is caught by one I can’t resist.
Perched in the window is The Canary Book by Robert L Wallace, a faded red tome with a canary etched delicately in gold on the cover and beautiful colour illustrations. Niche, but it sings to me.
It’s a gift for my uncle, who like his father, grandfather – and before him all the generations of men on that side of my family who were miners and way back bred birds to go down the pit – is devoted to his canaries.
These happiest of birds chirping, cheeping and swooping around light fittings were fixtures of my childhood and are still going strong. There’s the delight of a new chick (often an anniversary gift from my aunty), the drama when a hawk swoops down to grab one through the lean-to’s chicken wire and my uncle’s uncharacteristic emotion when a ‘sprag-legged’ chick apparently has to be dispatched.
Published in 1893, Wallace’s book is exhaustive but I’m still none the wiser about ‘sprag-legged’. However I do learn that ‘our Queen’ – that’ll be Victoria
– is crazy for canaries and that there are clear demarcation lines between the birds favoured north and south of the Border, Scots prizing a chunkier, ‘hoopit’ model with ‘gleg’ tail and that competition judges should beware glue and paint, that the way to teach a bird to ‘eat from you mouth’ is to place lettuce on your shoulder and if you want prizes, get ruby window panes to preserve the birds’ colour.
And a final treat, the adverts, for macassar oil to ‘eradicate scurf ’ and handbooks on everything from ‘Bunkum Entertainments’ (conjuring, performing fleas, ventriloquism, phrenology and lightning calculators) to Firework Making for Amateurs, Shadow Entertainments and Home Medicine and Surgery.
And all for £15. Cheep at the price.