Traditional style tattoo of a red and grey battle axe with a wrapped handle and pointed butt, on the calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red battle axe on a lower leg

Traditional · Calf · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a single battle axe with a curved blade, a red-filled head and a long grey handle that is bound with wrapping near the base and ends in a red collar and point. The outlines are bold and dark, with grey shading on the blade and handle giving it some depth. The axe is shown diagonally on a pale leg against a grey carpet, with the design filling most of the frame.

Traditional Calf Axe

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and keep your hands off that ale until I've finished. Harold promised the bride's father I would speak before the cake is cut, and I have never broken a promise to a man with a bad knee.

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Above Hollin Scar there was a smith called Oswin Crake who could not sleep unless his forge was lit. One spring a widow came up the track with a sack of old horseshoes and a grievance. Her son Edric had been cheated of a sheep-run by the Thorpe brothers, and she wanted an axe that would make them think twice. Oswin heated the head until it glowed like rowan berries, quenched it in the trough, and brought it out red as a fox's pelt. He bound the grip with waxed cord, nine turns from the base, and capped it with a collar of brass he had been saving for a wedding ring.

Edric carried it down to the Thorpe farm on a Michaelmas morning and stood in their yard with the axe hanging loose at his side. He did not swing it. Old Thorpe looked at the red head, the grey shine of the blade, the brass gleaming at the end of the haft, and he laughed at the boy. Edric laughed too, and that was the end of the quarrel. They shook hands over the sheep, and the axe went back up the track on his shoulder without ever once being used to split anything but kindling.

So when the bride's brother asks why his sister's new husband keeps that thing above the mantel, tell him it is for the kindling. That was Oswin's joke, and the widow's, and now it is mine. Bring the cake through, and somebody fetch Harold a chair.