Black and white flash design of piano keys curving across the page like a ribbon, with scripted lettering reading I will sing of the Lord's great love forever.

Piano keys ribbon with Psalm 89:1 lettering

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A black and white line drawing of piano keys forming a wavy, ribbon-like band. Decorative scripted lettering wraps around the keys, reading I will sing of the Lord's great love forever, with Psalm 89:1 in small capitals beneath. Solid black keys contrast with fine outlines and scrolled flourishes at each end.

Lettering Music Ribbon Scroll Psalm

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The piano came up the lane on a hay cart, its legs lashed with baler twine, and by the time the carter had unhitched his mare you were already on your knees in the bracken with a tuning hammer between your teeth. Nobody in Hollin Edge had heard a proper instrument since the chapel organ died. The schoolmistress wanted it in the hall for harvest supper, the vicar wanted it for Sunday, and Mrs Pyke at the mill only wanted to know whether it would stand the damp.

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The forest began at the bottom of the garden wall and climbed the hill in beech and holly, so dark by three in the afternoon that the keys looked like a row of teeth in an open mouth. You worked by the light from the lid. Most of the wires were sound, rusted only at the tips, but the bass note near the bottom kept sliding flat, as if something inside were pulling it down. When you finally eased the damper rail loose, a wren burst out from among the hammers in a clatter of moss and straw, and the note, when you struck it again, rang clean.

The vicar's wife brought you a sheet of paper that evening, copied in brown ink: I will sing of the Lord's great love for ever. She had found it tucked in the front of the hymnal and thought it would suit the lid. You pinned it above the keys so the children could read it while they waited, and when the hall filled the next Sunday, the bass held through the whole first verse without a waver.

Afterwards you walked home through the beeches with the hammer in your coat pocket. Behind you, from the open hall window, a child was picking out the tune with one finger, and each time she reached the lowest key a wren went up out of the wood to answer it.