Black ink Celtic triquetra knot tattoo with spiral details on the upper back, beside the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Celtic triquetra knot on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bare upper back, seen from behind, with a small black tattoo of a triquetra knot with spiral ends placed beside the shoulder blade. The lines are bold and mostly solid black with some interior detail, and the skin around it is plain with light freckling. The wearer's face is not visible, and the background is a domestic room with household items.

Back Triquetra Celtic knot Spiral Trinity knot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

So you want the one about Harrow Wood and the three cords. Sit closer to the fire, love, it only has ten minutes left in it. Right. Back when the village of Hollin still had a mill with a wheel that squealed like a stuck pig, there were three brothers called Tam, Ewan and Rhys, and they fought over everything. Bread, the byre door, which of them had let the goat out. Their mother had had enough of it. So one wet morning she sent them to the edge of the wood to fetch a length of cord from the old woman who kept the trees.

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The old woman didn't look up from her spindle. She took a single grey cord, knotted it round itself three times so the loops crossed and crossed again, and fed each end back through the middle so the ends curled tight like a fern. 'It has no start,' she said, 'and it has no finish. Hold it together or it will hold you apart.' Then she charged them one thing each, which I won't tell you, because it's the price and you'd only want to haggle.

On the way home Ewan tugged, Rhys tugged back, and Tam shouted that they were both idiots. The cord snapped at the crossing. Nell from the mill ran out with her apron full of flour, and she didn't scold them. She just took the two loose ends, pressed them into the spirals, and held them while the brothers, grumbling, each put one hand on the cord and let go of his own pride. It mended. It has never come undone since.

That cord still hangs on a nail inside the mill door, all three loops in one piece. And if you pass Harrow Wood at dusk, look for the smoke from three chimneys that rise up as one column. That's them, still holding on. Now mind the fire, and go to bed.