Pencil drawing of a Celtic cross with interlaced knotwork, a shamrock and a crowned claddagh heart held by two hands, shown as a flash design with no body placement.

Celtic cross with claddagh and shamrock

Geometric · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed drawing of a Celtic cross filled with interlaced knotwork bands, with a shamrock above a crowned claddagh heart held by two hands at the centre. The linework is fine and outlined, with soft graded shading in sepia-toned graphite on a white background. The design is centred and symmetrical, filling the page from top to bottom.

Geometric Knotwork Shamrock Heart Crown Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nuala, the cross for Mrs Feeney is nearly finished, though my hands are not what they were and the knotwork has taken me three weeks where I expected one. I have the bands cut and the shamrock set at the top of the shaft, where the loops run together like wet rope. The crown sits above the heart now, and I spent a whole afternoon on the two hands, because she was particular about them. She wanted them turned the way they are on the ring her husband bought in Galway the year before they wed, one facing in and one facing out, so that the heart looks held rather than placed.

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She brought the ring in herself on Tuesday and set it on my bench beside the chisels, as if I might need to check it against the stone. It was worn thin on one side from forty years of washing up and hauling creels, and I told her so. She laughed and said Tomas used to say the ring would outlast the boat, and the boat had gone down off Inishbofin in a bad February long before he did. She did not cry, not once, and I was glad of it, because I would have had to stop and make tea.

The last thing she asked was that I leave one band open at the foot of the shaft, where the knot runs down toward the hand. I told her a cross with a gap in it would look like a mistake. She said Tomas tied every net with one knot left loose, so that whatever got caught could find its way out again. I have left it open, and I have cut my initials small beneath the crown where nobody will see them unless they look properly.

She collects it on Saturday. Come up if you can. I will have the kettle on and the cross wrapped in sacking in the back of the van.