Black and white photo of two forearms with black lettering tattoos and paw prints, one reading I solemnly swear that I am up to no good and the other reading Mischief Managed.

Matching quote and Mischief Managed forearm tattoos

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms are shown side by side in a black and white photograph. The left arm carries the quote I solemnly swear that I am up to no good in a blackletter style, with a trail of paw prints beneath it. The right arm shows Mischief Managed with paw prints and a lightning bolt, in solid black ink with crisp linework.

Lettering Forearm Quote Paw print Lightning bolt Phrase

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the cat, she's been at the altar candles again. Right. You'll want the one about Brother Aldous and the ink, because it's the only story this house tells without a psalm stuck on the end. Two novices, Aldous and Tobin, both sixteen and both bored past bearing in the winter of the great flood. They had sworn the vow of silence on Tuesday, and by Thursday had decided it applied to everything except the scriptorium's ink.

Keep reading

Their plan was to write a motto on the wall of the cellarer's larder in gall ink, something that would fade by morning, so the cellarer would think the damp had got into his good cheese. Tobin wrote the words in a looping hand, every letter sworn to. Aldous went over them with lamp black and a goose feather. Then the grey cat came in from the storm, walked straight across the wet lettering and out the door, and left a trail of paw prints through the ink like a map of a very small, very determined army.

The cellarer found it at matins. He did not shout. He stood a long time in front of the wall, then laughed so hard he had to sit on a barrel of salt herring. Next morning he sent for both boys and set them to scrubbing the larder floor, and while they scrubbed he told them the paw prints were the finest thing to happen to his larder since the abbey was founded. The wall stayed as it was for forty years, which is why, if you go down to the cellars today, you'll see the jagged crack the storm left in the stone just above it.

So when a novice asks me what mischief is for, I tell him it's for leaving a mark where the rules stopped short. Now, who's going to fetch the cat?