Black and grey shaded swallow tattoo with a flowing tail on the lower abdomen, above low-rise jeans, beside a navel piercing.

Black and grey swallow on the lower abdomen

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A single swallow in flight is shown in outline with soft grey shading, its wings swept upwards and its forked tail curling into a long swirl. The tattoo sits on the side of the lower abdomen, and the photo is taken at close range with even lighting. Only black ink and grey tones are used.

Other Swallow Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Don't you lean on that rail, boy, not with the wind backing round like it is. Sit where I can see you. Right, the swallow. Every sailor I ever knew wanted one, and the reason is simple enough: a swallow always finds its way home, even from the far side of the world, so the old men said. My cousin Teddy had one put on his chest in Gravesend before he signed on the Marigold, and he swore by it until the night off Cape Finisterre when a squall took the foresail and half the crew with it. Teddy came up out of the water with his shirt torn open and the bird still flying, which is more than the ship could say.

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That was the year I was mate under Captain Hollis, a hard man who counted every biscuit and would not have a bird of any kind aboard. He called them bad luck. So when the cook's boy turned up with a swallow scratched in grey on his hip, the captain had him scrubbed raw with salt water and sent him to the bilges for a week. The boy never cried. He just sang under his breath all the time he was down there, and when they let him up again the first thing he did was ask me the way to Bristol.

I never did find out whether the swallow brought him home. We made our port in March, and the boy went down the gangplank with a sack over his shoulder and no backward look. Years later a letter came addressed to the Marigold, care of the harbour master, with a single grey feather tucked inside and no name at all. I keep it in my tobacco tin. Mind you, I'm not saying the bird did it, but it's a good sign to have on a man, isn't it? Pass me that lamp.