Black handwritten script reading "And she will be loved" on a white background, with a single sweeping stroke above the first word, shown as a lettering tattoo design.

Handwritten "And she will be loved" lettering

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

The image shows the phrase "And she will be loved" written in black, brush-style handwritten script on a plain white background. A single long curved stroke rises from the left and crosses over the start of the word "And". The lettering uses varied line weights in black ink only, with no shading or colour.

Lettering Quote Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit you down on that coil and keep your hands off the tar. Forty-one winters back this boat came off the slip at Ardglass with nothing aboard but a barrel of salt and a hand-lettered line on the forward plank. Nobody knew whose hand it was. Old Tam swore it was the schoolmaster's, and the schoolmaster swore it was Tam's, and that quarrel outlived them both.

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The words ran in a loose, quick script, the first stroke sweeping up from the stem like a wave that had changed its mind. And she will be loved. No name, no port, no date. When the paint was scraped for the refit, the men argued over what it meant. Was it a promise, or a warning to whoever came after and let her rot? Tam said a boat is loved by the one who keeps her dry, and he pumped her every watch for thirty years so the claim would stand.

The night the Corinna lost her mainmast off Rathlin, the schoolmaster's son was at the wheel. He steered her in by the lamp, and the white paint caught the light just where the swoosh curled over the bow. He never said a word about it. He only kept one hand on that plank as they came alongside, the way you'd touch a sleeping dog to make sure it was still there.

So when you see her canvas hung out on the quay at dawn, don't ask me who wrote it. Ask whether the rope's been tarred. Now pass me that mug, and mind the boy counting gulls on the stern rail. He'll be the one telling this in forty years, and he'll get the schoolmaster's name wrong.