Black and grey Celtic cross tattoo with knotwork, a fleur-de-lis centre, a crown on top and a banner reading Lil' King, shown on the outer thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Celtic cross with crown and banner

Traditional · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A Celtic cross with interlaced knotwork panels sits beneath a crown, with a fleur-de-lis at the centre of the cross and a ribbon banner across it that reads Lil' King. A ribbon tail curls below the cross and a further banner end appears at the upper left. The linework is bold and the shading is soft and grey, with highlights on the crown and knotwork, and the design is centred on plain skin.

Traditional Thigh Crown Fleur-de-lis Banner Knotwork Ribbon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind backed north-east as the Brigid cleared the Skerries, and old Tomas Fada, who had sailed under three captains and buried two, would not let the boy take the tiller. "A king steers his own boat," he said, though Liam had never heard him call anyone a king before. Liam was eleven, a cousin's son sent along to learn knots and keep his mouth shut.

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On the third night a squall tore the foresail and whipped loose a strip of faded red cloth that Tomas kept wrapped inside his oilskin. Gold thread still showed along one edge, a fleur-de-lis and a line of stitching that spelled out two words. He crawled the deck on his knees, gathering it up as though it were something alive, and when Liam asked what it was, Tomas only said his sister had sewn it the winter before she went to the nuns, and that it had been meant for the bow of a ship that never came home.

By morning the cloth was soaked through and the forestay was cut. Tomas knotted the strip to the stump of the broken mast, then carved with his knife a cross into the wood above it, interlaced panels running round and round like the tide in a bay. Above the arms he scratched a crown with three points, and then a fourth for the child who had never been to school.

Land came up at dusk, low and grey, with the light on Inishmore swinging across the water. Liam looked back at the mast. The cloth had torn free and was streaming behind them in the wake like a ribbon at a wedding. Tomas laughed for the first time since Liam had known him, and let the boy take the tiller.