Black and grey Claddagh tattoo of two hands holding a crowned heart, flanked by swirling scrollwork across the top of a foot.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Claddagh and scrollwork on a foot

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A Claddagh motif shows two hands holding a heart topped with a crown, with the heart shaded in soft grey and the hands and crown outlined in black. Thin, curling scrollwork extends to the left and right, and smooth grey shading sits behind the central design. The ink is entirely black and grey, and the design is centred on the top of the foot with the toes visible at the lower left.

Other Heart Crown Hand Scrollwork Swirl Foot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cook of the Mary Ellen had two hands the sea had never managed to take, though it tried most winters. He kept them in flour and lard and the warm brass of the galley range, and every morning he rolled out the crew's bread while the ship lifted and fell under him like a cart on a bad road.

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The ring came aboard in a herring net, tangled round a gutting knife off Inishbofin. It was silver, worn thin on the palm side, and showed two hands holding a heart with a small crown above it. Nobody on the boat could say whose it was, so the cook hung it on a nail above the range, where the kettle steam could reach it, and the crew came down for their tea and went away lighter for looking at it.

In March the mate, Liam Dooley, came to the hatch with a fever and asked for the ring. The cook lifted it down and put it in his palm. Dooley turned it over, found the hands worn smooth from years of rope, and said, "They're a baker's hands, those. Keep it till we're in."

At Cleggan the cook walked up the hill with the ring in his pocket and a loaf under his arm. Ellen Dooley was already at the gate, looking out at the water as if she had known which boat was coming. He held out the ring and the loaf together, and she took the loaf first, as a sensible woman would.