Black and grey ornamental swallow tattoo with dotwork detailing on the upper arm, in traditional style.

Ornamental swallow on an upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A swallow in flight fills most of the frame, with its outstretched wings and forked tail drawn in bold outline. The wings and body are decorated with stippled dotwork and fine patterned linework. Small script sits below the bird near the wing tip but is not legible. The tattoo is shown in black and grey on smooth skin, with a dark background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the wind has been foul for nine days and the cook has run out of anything that isn't salt pork, so you may take it that I am thinking of you more than I am thinking of my dinner. We raised the Azores on Tuesday, a grey smudge that became hills, and the swallows came out to meet us the way they always do, dropping onto the rigging as though they had been waiting on the quay. One of them sat on the flying jib boom for a full minute, turning its head this way and that, and I swear it looked at me the way your father looked at a bad horse.

Keep reading

Mr Pallister the bosun says a swallow at sea is a sign of land within a day, and he is right more often than the chart-room boys, though I told him that is not a difficult record to beat. I have kept the little feather it dropped on the deck. It is grey and black with a white tip, and I have pressed it between the pages of the almanac where you will find it when you come to the March tides.

The captain has promised we will be in Lisbon by Friday if the glass holds, and then there will be letters waiting, if the post office there has any sense. Tell your mother the coffee here is not as bad as she fears. Tell the boy to mind the gate. I have another two pages in me yet, but the watch is changing and I have ink on my sleeve.

Your loving husband, Tom

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