Black ink tattoo of an anchor beside the script quote 'Don't pray for an easy life, Pray for the strength to endure a hard one' on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Anchor and quote on a shoulder blade

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink anchor sits to the left of three lines of cursive script reading 'Don't pray for an easy life, Pray for the strength to endure a hard one'. The linework is clean and even, with the anchor drawn in bolder strokes than the lettering. The photograph is taken from behind in soft light, with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame against plain skin.

Lettering Back Shoulder Anchor Quote Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The barge Mercy Hollin had been stuck on the mud below Thame for three days when Ada Pell came down the towpath with a basket of eels and a complaint. Her husband Joe had asked the river for a calm season and got a flood instead. He sat on the cabin step with his hands between his knees, not looking at the water.

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Ada set the basket down and told him what her grandmother had told her, that the old bargemen never prayed for fair weather. Fair weather came without being asked. They prayed for a stout heart and a stronger rope. Joe gave a short cough of a laugh and said the parson would take a dim view. Ada said the parson had never once tied off a boat in a gale.

They hauled the Mercy off the bank that night with the lantern swinging from the mast and the anchor dragged behind on a hemp line. Joe cut his palm on the iron flukes and swore, and Ada wrapped it in her apron without a word. By dawn the barge floated free, low and grumbling, and the reeds lay bent flat under a wind that had no intention of stopping.

Years later, when the lock-keeper's boy asked why the Pells never begged the sky for an easy run, Ada gave him the answer she had given Joe. An easy life leaves a bargeman soft at the tiller. The river is kind enough to show you where the hard parts are. Then she sent him back to the lock for more rope, because the wind had come round again.