Black and grey tattoo of a lace-cuffed hand gripping a dripping snake head, shown in two close-up photographs, one above a LUCKY banner.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Snake-headed hand with lace cuff

Traditional · Black and grey · Photo

A hand with a ruffled lace cuff grips a snake's head, which has an open mouth and drips from its fangs. Bold black outlines are combined with stippled dotwork on the scales and cuff, and the lower photograph shows arrows and a pointing hand tattoo nearby. The design is in black and grey ink, and the two stacked photographs show the same piece at different angles.

Traditional Dotwork Hand Snake Banner Arrow

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The toll-keeper at Gallow Bridge kept a snake in her sleeve. Nobody believed it until the Dunmore cattlemen tried to cross without paying, and she laid her hand on the wall of the hut, lace cuff brushing the stone, then closed her fist round the grey head of the adder that came out of the frills, its mouth open and its fangs weeping onto the dust.

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The cattlemen paid. They paid in silver, in two good horses, and with a promise that their sons would never turn a cart back at the bridge. Each year the arrangement held, and each year the snake grew a little longer, so that by the time the old woman's daughter, Ysolde, came of age, the coil reached past the elbow and the lace had to be let out at the seams.

Ysolde learned that the snake was not hungry. It only wanted to be held. One winter she sat at the crossing with the creature wound across her knuckles, and when a stranger came up the pass with a sack of salt and a sour face, she said, "Pay the toll or let the snake choose." The stranger laughed and reached for his purse, and the adder simply yawned, letting a slow thread of venom fall onto his boot. He paid double.

Afterwards the road was quiet. People say the snake still hangs about the gap, though nobody sees its tail, only the lace cuff on the gatepost, pale and perfectly ironed, as if someone is waiting to be paid.