Black ink mermaid tattoo with flowing hair and a long tail wrapping down the upper arm, drawn in a loose, sketchy blackwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mermaid tattoo on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A mermaid with long, flowing hair and both arms raised overhead, her tail curling down the length of the arm. The linework is loose and sketchy, with heavy solid black areas, broken lines and textured strokes along the tail. Only black ink is used, and the figure wraps from the shoulder towards the elbow across the upper arm.

Blackwork Upper arm Shoulder Mermaid Hair Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bride's mother had not wanted the fiddler from Scald Head, but he came anyway, carrying his instrument wrapped in oilskin as if it might drown. By the time the lamps were lit along the harbour wall, he had played three reels and a slow air that made the old men look down at their boots.

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Nobody saw the mermaid come up the slipway. Ailsa Penrose, who had sold eels at the market for forty years, swore afterwards that she had been dry on the steps and dripping only from her hair, which hung black and tangled to her waist. She stood at the edge of the lamplight with both arms lifted over her head, as if reaching for a rope someone had thrown, and the fiddler began to play for her without being asked.

She danced until the tide turned. Every man who tried to take her hand came away with a fistful of cold water and a line of scales across his palm. The bride, who had been promised to a farmer's son with a good boat and worse manners, cut the ribbon from her wrist and threw it into the harbour. The mermaid caught it, knotted it about her tail, and looked back once at the bride with an expression no one could later describe.

The farmer's son never married. The bride went out on the morning tide with the fiddler, and the next spring the boat came back with only the fiddler aboard, still playing his slow air. Some say the ribbon still drifts in the harbour, and that a girl who lifts her arms when the water turns will be pulled clean off the wall by someone who has been waiting for her.