Green and purple thistle flash design with swirling curled motifs and the Gaelic words Alba gu bràth printed beneath it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Thistle design with Alba gu bràth

Colour · Flash

A stylised thistle sits at the centre, with a purple crown and a green, scroll-like bloom, flanked by curling green leaf-like swirls. The Gaelic phrase Alba gu bràth is set in black serif lettering along the bottom. Shading is green with lighter highlights and dark outlines, and the layout is symmetrical and centred on a plain white background.

Thistle Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Callum, It's gone four and the ward has that hum it gets before the trolleys start. I'm writing on the back of a drug chart because the good paper ran out at midnight, which is the sort of thing you'd have laughed at.

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Mrs Ferrier in bed six asked me tonight whether the green wool she knitted for Dad was the right shade of thistle. I said it was. She cried a bit, the way she does, and said Dad always called the thistle the only Scottish thing that didn't need a permit to grow. Then she made me promise to keep the cutting from the back garden alive, the one you took to Auckland in a jam jar and swore you'd repot. Did you?

Here's the thing I haven't told anyone. On Tuesday, on the bus home, the sky over the Tay had that silver-grey colour it goes before rain, and I thought of you at the harbour wall saying Alba gu bràth like it was a dare. Scotland forever, you said, as if it had been waiting for someone brave enough to say it out loud. I laughed at you then. I'm not laughing now.

Water the thing. Send me a photo of it on the windowsill with the Southern Cross behind it, and I'll pin it above the sluice sink where the night staff can see. Love, Morag. P.S. The purple crown has opened. Mrs Ferrier says that's a sign of something, though she won't say what.