Natural History

From The Complete English Shot (1907):

There has been a great deal of controversy upon how the dark-red colour arose. Mr. John King, who knew more of Irish setters than any other man known to the author, affirmed that red-and-white was the original colour, and the general opinion was that those of the last-named markings were the most easy to break. All the most setter-like Irish that have come before the author have had more or less white upon them, and as colour certainly denotes blood or origin, and the manner of hunting of the whole-red dogs is spaniel-like, it does not seem to be unlikely that the springer spaniel, the colour of a blood bay horse without a white hair spoken of by a Suffolk parson in the middle of the eighteenth century, may have had a good deal to do with the origin of the red Irish setter. At any rate, no other setters or spaniels of the colour can be traced in the early history of what was then the English spaniel, or the setter (pg. 164-165).

Red springer spaniels were once common. The red coloration no longer exists in the English springer, but the Welsh springer is red and white as a rule.

From my understanding, the original land spaniel of the British Isles was red and white.  The setters are believed to have arisen from this spaniel, but it just as likely that French index dogs, which are now known as the various breeds of epagneul, are at the base of these dogs.

I am not one of those who buys the commonly held assertion that spaniels are from Spain. It always said, but not one single piece of evidence is provided to back up the claim. Spaniel and epagneul look similar to the word for Spanish, which is  Espagnol and Español, but even if someone were to provide a true linguistic connection, it still would not prove that spaniels are Spanish. It could simply be that everyone believed spaniels were Spanish for so many generations that they got this name.

Whatever their origin, setters from the British Isles are related to land spaniels, but whether they are more closely related to the flushing land spaniels or the epagneul breeds of France is still not been fully explored. I lean more toward them being more closely related to the epagneul gun dogs, but no one has been able to sort this one out.

There were differences between solid red and red and white Irish setters for many years, but whether these differences result from the addition of red springer spaniel blood is also an assertion that hasn’t been proven. The spaniel in the cross wouldn’t have to be a solid red. Solid colors are dominant to particolors, even if the actual red color is a recessive. So it could have been a solid black or liver spaniel that introduced the solid color into the Irish red setter, and then through backcrossing, there was a selection for the recessive red color.

Teasdale-Buckell posits an interesting theory on the origins of the solid red setter, but it is not clear if the differences in the red and white and red breeds of setter is the result of introducing new blood or if it is the result of show breeding with the solid red dogs.

There are many theories about the origins of spaniels and setters. Some of them, like their supposed Spanish origin are quite dubious, while others are certainly possible– but not proof provided for such assertions is almost always wanting.

All that we know is that the original setter of Ireland was red and white, and the original British spaniel was also red and white. But how we came to have setters as distinct from flushing spaniels and why those setters in Ireland were red and white and then red are both questions that have not been fully answered.

But it is fun to speculate.