Two black and grey tattoos on a calf, one of a guillotine above the words Keep your chin up and one of a gallows with a noose above the words Hang in there.

Guillotine and gallows tattoos on a calf

Calf · Black and grey · Photo

Two matching tattoos sit side by side on a lower leg against a brick wall. The left shows a guillotine with a wooden frame and blade above the words KEEP YOUR CHIN UP, and the right shows a gallows with a noose above the words HANG IN THERE. The outlines are dark and fairly uniform, with simple wood-grain texture and light shading, and the lettering is set in plain capitals beneath each image.

Calf Lettering Matching pair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The headsman from Fallow Cross and the hangman from Hurst came up our lane on the same wet morning in March, each certain the other had stolen his trade. My father, Tobias Rede, had cut the timber for both frames from the beeches at the forest's edge, and he had the sense to keep his tools out of their quarrel. He set the two frames side by side in the yard, one with a blade hung high and clean, the other with a crossbeam wide enough for a rope, and left them to argue over which had been made with more care.

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They argued until the rooks came down to the stubble. Gorse, the headsman, a thin man who kept his hat on indoors, said a blade was the kinder end. Mr Lusk, who cored his apples with a penknife, said a rope gave a man time to think of something clever to say. Father listened, then took his plane to the crossbeam and began cutting letters into the grain. Lusk leaned in to read them and asked what they were for. Father said they were advice for whoever stood beneath, and that a man facing either frame deserved something useful to hear.

Neither of them would let the other have the last word, so they paid Father in equal shares and each hauled his frame away on a borrowed cart. I watched the two carts crawl up the Hurst road in the rain, one wheel squealing on every turn, until the trees swallowed them.

That autumn a boy from Hurst brought Father a bent coin and asked which frame had the better words. Father only smiled and said the rope one, because it had the longer sentence.