Black lettering across the finger joints of two clenched fists, reading Do or do not, there is no try, a lettering tattoo on the hands.

Finger lettering reading Do or do not, there is no try

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

Two clenched fists are shown with the words DO, OR, DO, NOT, THERE, IS, NO and TRY tattooed in capitals across the finger segments, one word per segment. The lettering is in black ink with a simple, slightly irregular hand-drawn sans-serif letterform and sits on the fingers with a soft, natural look. The composition is tight and centred on the hands, with a red patterned top and a silver ring visible in the background.

Lettering Hand Word Quote Finger Knuckle Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mags Holloway had the poker in one hand and a bowl of cold porridge in the other when the stranger stamped the snow from his boots and asked whether the inn had a bed for a man crossing the pass by morning. The pass had been shut since Martinmas. She told him so. He said he would try.

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Old Ebbe, who had kept sheep on the far side of the ridge for fifty winters, lifted his head from the settle. "Try," he said, and made a fist of his left hand, then his right, and held them to the firelight so the ink on the knuckles showed. Each finger carried a word, and read across the two hands the words said the thing plainly enough.

"My sister's boy went up after the mail," Ebbe said. "Told his mother he would try. He tried all the way to the cairn, then sat down in the drift where a trying man sits, halfway between yes and no. They found him with his cap still on. The mail sack was never found."

The stranger said nothing. In the morning Mags watched him go up the white road with a rope, a lantern and a steady step, not a hurried one. He did not look back, and he did not say he would try again.

He came down the valley at dusk with the sack on his shoulder and frost in his eyebrows. He dropped it by the fire and held up his hands, knuckles outward, and Ebbe grunted with approval. Mags put the kettle on. Nobody asked him what he had tried.