Solid black blackwork tattoo of a circle with a spiral and crossed lines, on the upper chest of a man in an open blue shirt.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black spiral and crossed lines on the chest

Blackwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tattoo of a circle containing a spiral, with several straight lines crossing above it, sits on the upper chest. The shapes are filled in with solid black ink and show no visible shading or fine detail. The man wears an open light blue shirt, and the framing crops the image below the chin, so no face is visible.

Blackwork Chest Spiral Circle Symbol Abstract

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been falling on Harrow Cross market since the morning bells, and by noon the cobbles ran like a millrace between the stalls. Mrs Odile Penhallow kept her spiral stone under the awning with the eel-pots, wrapped in oilcloth. It was a disc of black slate no wider than a cartwheel hub, cut with a groove that wound from its edge to its heart, and folk who bought from her came back to touch it for luck.

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A boy named Tam came one afternoon with a sack of wet walnuts and asked her what the groove was for. She said it was the road the rain took when it had nowhere else to go. He did not believe her, so she told him to set his finger at the outer edge and follow the groove in without lifting. He walked his finger round nineteen times, and at the centre he found a hole no bigger than a barley grain, with water dripping out of it onto his wrist.

Ah, he said, and that was the whole of his reply, because he was ten and had nothing better. Odile laughed until she coughed, then told him the old saying: the crossed poles of the market roof hold up the sky, and the wheel keeps the rain from pooling in the middle. Pull a pole and the roof sags. Pull the wheel and the water comes straight down on everyone at once.

Tam went home and told his father, who was a carter and did not believe in roofs. That night the carter drove his cart under the poles and waited out the storm, and in the morning the market was dry, though the river had risen over the bridge. Odile kept the stone under the eel-pots as before, and the boy came every Saturday to trace the groove and count, always arriving at nineteen.