Two stacked photos of blue script lettering tattoos reading deirfiúr mhór and deirfiúr bheag on pale skin.

Irish script lettering tattoos in blue ink

Lettering · Colour · Photo

The top photo shows the words deirfiúr mhór in dark purple-blue script, and the bottom photo shows deirfiúr bheag in a brighter blue script. Both pieces use smooth, even linework with a flowing, connected letterform style. The pale skin and plain background keep the focus on the lettering, and the two images are arranged one above the other for comparison.

Lettering Script Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry at Lough Eilean was kept by two sisters who had never agreed on anything, least of all which of them was the elder. Sorcha was taller by a hand and said that settled it. Bríd, who was smaller and quicker with a rope, said a hand was only a hand, and that the river did not ask anyone's height before it took them across.

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The winter the king's tax-man came, the river froze at its edges and he wanted his silver carried over before the ice closed. He stacked his chests in the boat and told the sisters that whichever of them could haul the greatest weight would keep the crossing. Sorcha heaved until her knees gave under the chests. Bríd said nothing. She tied the rope to the far post, set her shoulder against the stern and walked the boat across the grey water one slow pull at a time, while her sister sat in the bow with her face in her hands.

On the far bank the tax-man counted his silver and found it all there, which surprised him more than it should have. Sorcha climbed out and sat down on the cold stone beside her sister. Neither spoke for a while. Then Sorcha took her knife and cut two words into the ferry post, deirfiúr mhór high on the wood and deirfiúr bheag beneath it, so that anyone who came down to the water would read them in order.

Nobody on the lough said which was the elder after that. The words stayed on the post through three floods and a king's death, and in the mornings the ferry still ran with one sister at the oars and one at the rope, each of them pretending not to look at the carving.