Black and grey dotwork jellyfish tattoo with long trailing tentacles running down the side of the ribs.

Jellyfish tattoo along the ribs

Dotwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large jellyfish with a domed bell and long, wavy tentacles stretches down the side of the torso. The bell is shaded with fine stippled dots and bold outlines, while the trailing frilled sections are filled with dense dotwork that fades toward the lower edge. The subject is set against dark, plain background, with the skin tone and curve of the ribs giving the design its shape.

Dotwork Ribs Jellyfish Tentacle Sea creature

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Eilidh Garrow cooked for the herring boat Kittiwake for thirty winters and never once let a pot boil dry. The autumn the nets came up heavy with jellyfish, the crew swore the sea was cursing them and wanted the lot tipped back. Eilidh would not have it. She filled the big copper with seawater, set it on the back of the range, and lowered in the largest bell, the one with its frilled skirts trailing like wet washing.

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Each night after the men had eaten, she sat by the copper and counted its tentacles. They grew longer, she said, when nobody was watching. By morning the water was warmer and the creature had drifted to the far side, folding itself into the shape of a lantern on a hook. The mate called it witchcraft and took his supper at the other end of the table. Eilidh only said the thing wanted feeding, and she fed it scraps of herring, one silver piece at a time.

In February the boat went out into a sea that flattened the gulls. A wave tore the wheelhouse door off its hinges and the lamp went with it. In the dark the men heard a low note coming up through the boards, like a bell struck under water, and they steered toward it until the Pentland light showed grey through the spray. When they limped into harbour the copper was empty, and Eilidh had already gone home.

Nobody found a jellyfish in the galley after that. But the mate, who was a practical man, swore he saw pale threads still wound round the kettle handle, and that they were warm when he touched them.