Black and grey realism tattoo of a lion with a detailed, feathered mane covering the shoulder and upper arm, shown from three angles.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Lion with ornate mane on a shoulder and upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's head in profile, with its mane rendered as layered, feather-like flourishes and ornamental detail, covers the shoulder and upper arm. The work uses fine hatching and soft shading to give the fur and face depth, and the three panels show the piece from the front, side and back of the arm. It is shown in black and grey ink on lightly tanned skin against a plain outdoor background.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Lion Mane Feather Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Shut the shutters, Tam, and bring the lamp nearer, for the wind has been at the door since noon and it will want its supper too. You'll have heard of the lion of Harrow Pass. No? Then sit down, and I'll tell it the way my grandmother told it to me, with the snow coming in under the door.

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The lion was not born to the mountain. He came up from the lowland fairs in a painted cart, and he was old even then, his mane gone thin and grey at the edges. A weaver's girl in Scarth took pity on him. She had a basket of goose feathers, bronze thread and a hundred little brass bells, and she worked them into his mane one night by candlelight, layer on layer, until he could hardly lift his head for the weight of it. When he saw himself in the still water of the trough, he roared. Nobody had ever made him so handsome.

That winter the pass closed early. Forty travellers were sheltering in this very room when the cook's boy went out for kindling and did not come back. The lion heard him calling from the drift behind the stable, and he went out into the white with his feathers bright as frost. He walked ahead of the boy's lantern, bells ringing, while the men inside lit every lamp they owned so the gold thread could be seen from the road. Each time the boy faltered, the lion shook his mane and the bells rang out, and the boy came on.

By morning the snow had stopped, and the lion lay down in the yard, too cold to rise. The girl from Scarth came up the road in spring to find him. She found only a bare mane of bronze thread and one feather, which she pinned above the door, and which is still there if you know where to look.