Black and grey realism tattoo of three dog tags on a beaded chain, with the words Love, Laugh and Live, across the side of the ribs.

Dog tags on a beaded chain on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Three dog tags hang from a looping beaded chain that wraps across the side of the ribs. Each tag carries a single word in cursive script, reading Love, Laugh and Live, and the tags are shaded with soft highlights and dark drop shadows to give depth. The design is in black and grey only, and the chain curves diagonally across the frame with the tags spaced down its length.

Realism Ribs Chain Bead Love Script word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lorry wouldn't turn over at Thornbury, so the last of Pascoe's Travelling Marvels spent the night in a wet field with the ringmaster's three tin tags laid out on the tailboard. Nobody had money to fix the engine. Nobody had money for the big top either, which the bank had already taken, and its centre pole leaned against the hedge like a tired old man.

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Samuel Pascoe had stamped the words himself, forty years before, with a set of punches borrowed from a saddler in Redruth. Love went on the first tag, Laugh on the second, Live on the third. He strung them on a beaded chain so the company could pass them hand to hand. Whoever held the chain was boss until the next town. The tags had gone round through tumblers and knife-throwers and a dwarf who could juggle eggs, and each keeper rubbed them bright on a sleeve before handing them on.

Mercy, who walked the high wire, did the sums on the back of an old playbill. Eleven pounds, a sack of oats, and a spotted dog that could still count to seven. She wanted to sell the tags to a scrap man in Bristol. Tom, who had been the clown for thirty years and had never once got a laugh in a town he didn't know, said the chain was the only thing in the show worth keeping. They argued until the fire went grey and the rain stopped.

In the morning Mercy found the chain looped over the wheel arch, the tags turned face down in the dew. She read them anyway, though she knew what they said. Then she went to wake Tom and told him the lorry would start if they pushed it down the hill. They pushed it, it coughed, and it caught, and she hung the chain from the mirror where the first word could see the road.