Black and grey dragon head with Celtic knotwork wrapping across an upper arm and shoulder, with two smaller dragon heads below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dragon and Celtic knotwork on an upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large dragon head with an open jaw and bared teeth dominates the design, with a scaled body curling behind it. Celtic interlace knotwork surrounds the dragon and extends down the arm, where two smaller dragon heads appear near the elbow. The piece uses black and grey shading with fine hatching and smooth gradients, and the sweeping composition wraps over the shoulder.

Upper arm Shoulder Dragon Celtic knot Knotwork Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit in closer to the fire, for the wind off Carrig Head takes half of every word. Keeper Donal Ó Faoláin had climbed the stair there every night for thirty-one years, and on the night the sea began to knot itself he was already halfway up, the oil can knocking against his hip. Below him the water had gone the colour of wet slate. It turned slowly and wrongly, in loops that tightened and let go, like a fist opening and closing on nothing.

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Down in the cove, two black heads lay on the rocks with their long jaws open, teeth bared at the lamp. My mother kept the old tale for bad weather. The sea-dragon Lúcháin was bound to the bottom of the bay by a cord of weed, one loop for every man the water had taken, and the knot would hold for as long as a light burned on the headland. Donal had never believed a word of it. He believed it now, with the wind pulling at his coat.

He trimmed the wick, fed the mantle, and wound the great lens round until the beam swept out over the cove. The cord rose out of the foam, scaled and silver-grey, and the dragon's head came up after it, jaw wide, seeking the light the way a hound seeks a hand. Donal did not look away. He said the names of the drowned aloud, all of them, the way the tale required, and one by one the loops came loose.

By morning the sea was flat. The fishermen found the weed-cord stretched along the sand, every knot undone, lying open like a letter somebody had finished reading. Donal's lamp was still burning when they reached him, and he had never once in thirty-one years looked so tired, or so easy in himself.