Black and grey fine line tattoo of a tied bouquet of lily of the valley stems and leaves across the upper back, near the shoulder blade.

Lily of the valley bouquet on a shoulder blade

Botanical · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bouquet of lily of the valley is tied with a band at the stem ends, with bell-shaped flowers and long leaves spreading upwards and outwards. The linework is fine and even, with light stippled shading on the flowers and leaves. The design is in black and grey and sits diagonally across the upper back over the shoulder blade.

Botanical Fine line Back Shoulder Bouquet Flower Leaves Stem

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Above Harrowby Pit the woods ran thick with lily of the valley, and the women of the row said it grew wherever a man had been buried without his name spoken. Nell Corrie went up the bank each Sunday with string in her apron pocket and cut the stems low, the way her mother had shown her, so the roots would keep. She bundled the bells in threes and tied the ends with grey wool, because a bunch left loose would not survive the walk down to the cottages.

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Her man Tom worked the low seam, and the story the old women told was that a bunch kept in a jug by the door would ring if the cage was coming up with someone in it. Nobody had ever heard a bell ring. Nell listened anyway, every shift, with her hand flat on the table and the kettle ticking as it cooled.

On the morning of the fall at the north drift, the flowers in the jug were as still as stone. Nell did not go to the pithead. She walked up the bank instead and cut a fresh bundle, and she carried it to the top of the spoil heap where the men would see it when they came out. She stood there until the whistle went, and the wind came over the slag and set every small white bell swinging against the others.

Tom came up at dusk on his own feet, black to the eyes, and said he had heard a sound like a hundred thimbles in the dark. Nell gave him the bunch to hold. For years afterwards the row tied its Sunday flowers with grey wool, and nobody could say whether it was for the bells or for the men who came back to hear them.