Fine line script tattoo reading 'Have courage and be kind' in black ink across the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Have courage and be kind script on upper back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a fine line script tattoo spelling out 'Have courage and be kind' over two lines on the upper back, close to the shoulder. The lettering is thin, black and evenly weighted, with flowing joined strokes and a slight slant. The skin is pale and the background is dark, with dark hair at the top of the frame and a black strap crossing the right side.

Fine line Lettering Back Quote Script text Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had been down three days when Morag Tennant found the ewe in the lower field, lying on her side against the drystone wall with her breath coming short. Her husband had gone to the market at Kelso on the last bus and would not be back until dark, so she pulled on his boots and went out with a lantern and a coil of baling twine.

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Her neighbour Euan Pringle came up the track at first light, though nobody had sent for him. He had seen the lantern from his own window and knew the Tennants' ewes were not due until March. He said nothing about the hour. He knelt in the straw beside her and worked his cold hands into the animal's wool until the lamb came out, grey and still, and he rubbed it with sacking until it coughed.

Afterwards they sat on an upturned bucket in the byre and drank tea from the same tin mug. Morag asked him why he had come, and he shrugged and said his father had taught him that a farm was never one farm in weather like this, that every gate belonged to somebody down the road. She remembered the words his father had cut into a slate above the door of the old steading, have courage and be kind, though nobody had looked at them for years.

In spring the lamb was sold at Hawick and the money bought a new gate for the lower field, hung by Euan on a Saturday with the sun on his back. Morag wrote the phrase on the inside of the gatepost in pencil, where the rain would take it in time, because she did not need it kept. She only needed to remember where to look.