Bold red traditional tattoo of a rampant heraldic lion with black outlines and shading, on the forearm.

Red rampant lion tattoo on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A heraldic lion rampant stands on its hind legs with raised front paws, showing claws, a detailed mane and a curled tail. The solid red ink is outlined in black with dark shading along the mane, legs and body that gives the figure volume. The design fills most of the frame against plain skin on a dark background.

Traditional Forearm Lion Claw Mane Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lion had been painted on the inn sign of the Red Rampant at Kirkcaldy Cross since before anyone in Hallow Mere could remember, and every spring the brewer's widow climbed a ladder to scrub its mane with vinegar and a stiff brush. This year the paint had flaked away from one raised paw, so the widow sent for Tomas Greig, the only man in the parish who could mix a red that didn't go brown in the rain. He arrived with a tin under his arm and a grievance about the price of linseed.

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He worked for three days, and on the third the vicar came out to look up at him. The vicar said the lion looked too pleased with itself, that a heraldic beast ought to be fierce and dignified, and Tomas said a lion that had been stood on its back legs for two centuries was entitled to a bit of cheek. They argued about the tail. The vicar wanted it lower, the way the arms in the church porch had it, and Tomas said the arms in the porch were drawn by a man who had never seen a cat.

On the last afternoon a girl from the post office came past with a letter for the inn and stopped to watch the brush move along the claws. She asked whether the lion was real. Tomas said it was as real as anything hung over a door, and she said that wasn't an answer, and he laughed and gave her the brush to finish the black outline on the tail. Her line wobbled, then straightened. The vicar, from below, said it would do.

The sign swung that evening in a soft wind, and the new red caught the last of the light across the square. Nobody in the village ever agreed on the tail, but the girl from the post office walked past the inn every morning after that, and she always looked up.