Green and black Celtic cross tattoo with interlaced knotwork and a shamrock at the centre, shown on a limb.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Green Celtic cross with shamrock

Other · Colour · Photo

A Celtic cross fills the frame, with a green ring behind the arms and interlace knotwork on each arm. A small shamrock sits at the centre where the arms meet. Bold black outlines and soft shading give the cross depth, and the green ink is the dominant colour against the skin.

Other Cross Knotwork Shamrock Clover

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gate at the bottom of Crooked Field has rusted shut since your grandfather's time, so when the hinge finally gives in January you and Mrs Halloran's son have to lift the whole thing off its post. Frost sits in the grooves of the stone cross leaning beside it. Someone carved interlace into each arm, ropes that pass over and under themselves without ever ending, and the lichen has crept into the loops so the knots look painted on, bright as new paint in the low sun.

Keep reading

Tomas Keogh used to say you could find your way home from anywhere if you followed a knot with one finger and never lifted it. He showed you on the cross the first winter you came to work the land, tracing the green ring round its shoulders, then down the long arm, then back up. At the centre, where the arms meet, a three-leaved clover is cut so shallow that only the morning light finds it. He called it the place you keep your luck, then laughed at himself for saying it.

In February a ewe went down in the sleet and you went after her with a torch that kept dying. The fields all looked the same, white on white, until the beam caught the grey-green curve of the stone. You put your palm flat on it and followed the loop with your finger, over and under, the way he taught you, and it brought you out to the gate without a single wrong turn. By then the ewe had dropped twins in the lee of the wall, both of them steaming and alive.

By spring the lichen had greened again. You tied a strip of red wool to the topmost arm so the lambing crew could find the cross in the dark, and you stood a while with your hand on the clover at the centre, warm from the sun and the only thing on the hill that was.