Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a bare tree with a dotted sun and birds in flight across the upper back.

Bare tree with birds and dotwork sun on a back

Dotwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a leafless tree sits centrally on the upper back, with a ring of stippled dots forming a sun or moon behind the branches. Four or five small birds in flight appear on either side of the crown, and a fan of dotted rays spreads beneath the trunk. The linework is fine and the shading is built entirely from stipple, giving a soft, airy composition.

Dotwork Fine line Back Tree Bird Sun Ray Branches

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, the kettle's not yet cold. You'll want to hear about the tree on Hollin Pass, the one with no leaves, because nobody living has seen it dressed, and that's the first thing you should know about it.

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Every winter the fog came up off the tarn like wet wool, and the carters lost the path a hundred yards from the top. So the people of Carrow built that tree a ring of stones, and at the first hard frost they hung a lantern in its branches. The lantern showed through the murk like a sun that had lost its way. Old Hesketh Brall kept the lamp lit for forty years, and when his knees gave out, his granddaughter Winifred carried it up the hill with a sack of tallow on her back.

She was the one who noticed the birds. Five of them, swallows by their forked tails, came over the pass the autumn the lamp went cold, and instead of heading south they folded themselves into the bare crown and would not leave. Winifred said they were waiting for the light, the same as she was. So she lit the lantern every night, and the birds sat in the branches like a row of stitches holding the sky to the hill.

When the thaw came the carters found the track again. The tree was still standing with its arms out, and the frost under it had set in rays so fine you could count every spoke. Winifred is buried beneath it now, and the swallows, if you believe the shepherds, still come back to roost at the hour the sun goes down.