Fine line black tattoo of lily of the valley stems in a small glass jar on the inner upper arm.

Lily of the valley in a jar on an upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A small tattoo shows a glass jar tied with string, holding a leaf and a stem of lily of the valley with bell-shaped flowers. The linework is thin and single-needle style, with light dot shading on the flower stems. The design is entirely black ink on pale skin, set against a plain grey background and a dusky pink sleeve.

Fine line Botanical Upper arm Jar Flower Leaf Stem String

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The narrowboat Marrow had been moored below Thornley Lock since the thaw, and every morning Tam Greaves walked the towpath to the water meadow before the mist lifted. He came back with lily of the valley cut short in his fist, because his mother said the bells would keep longer on a stem that was cut clean.

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Old Mab Harrow kept the lock house and watched him come and go. She told him the flowers would only last while there was water under them, and that a bunch carried dry in a pocket was a bunch already gone. Tam said he had never been one to listen to the old, which made her laugh until she coughed. Each day he brought Ruth, the lock-keeper's youngest, a stem with five or six bells hanging off it like small white lamps, and each day she tipped them into a jam jar on the sill and said nothing.

In May the meadow went white from hedge to river, and Ruth took him down to see it. She knelt in the wet grass and told him to leave the whole field alone, that it was theirs to walk through and not to carry home. Tam went back to the boat with empty hands and felt foolish for it. That evening he found a length of white string in the cabin drawer, took the glass jar from the shelf, and tied the two together around its neck.

He walked down to the lock the next morning with nothing picked. He set the jar on the lock beam where she would see it, then stood a while on the bank and listened to the water going through the gates. When Ruth came out, she looked at the jar, looked at him, and laughed the way Mab had laughed at him the first day.