Colour tattoo of a stag with large antlers in front of bare trees, shaded in browns and greys, on the upper arm.

Stag with antlers and bare trees on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A stag with a full set of antlers looks over its shoulder, its head turned towards the viewer, set against sketched bare branches and a tree trunk. The body is shaded with soft brown and red tones and dark grey edges, while the antlers are rendered in ochre and gold. Fine black outlines define the branches and trunk, which fade into lighter grey washes behind the animal, and the design wraps around the upper arm of a person wearing a blue top.

Realism Upper arm Stag Deer Antler Tree Branches Forest

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit yourselves down, the lot of you, and mind the fire, because this is the one about the stag at the top of Gelder Wood. My mother had it from her mother, who was born the year they sank the Hollin pit, and she swore every word, though she'd swear to anything after the second sherry.

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Every morning before the cage went down, the stag stood where the trees thinned against the spoil heap. Antlers like a pair of gilded candlesticks, the colour of the brass on the chapel door. The old colliers called him the Warden, and nobody cut so much as a sapling in that wood. A lad named Samuel Brierley, who'd come over from Wigan with nothing but his boots and a temper, laughed at them all. A deer was a deer, he said, and a pit was a pit, and the one never came to fetch the other.

Then came the bad morning, when the roof gave way on the lower drift and the dust was so thick the lamps guttered out. Sam was in the cutting when it happened. He crawled the wrong way, deeper, until he could see nothing at all. Then he heard hooves on the iron rails above, slow, clattering, stopping and starting again, as if something were waiting for him to keep up. He crawled after the sound, up the airway, until his fingers found cold air.

He came out at dawn, black as a chimney sweep, and the stag was standing at the pit head with its head turned right round to look at him over its shoulder. Then it walked back into the trees and was gone. They say it's still up there, turning to check who's still coming behind. So when you see a stag glance back at you, don't be too quick to look away.