Traditional style tattoo of Christ with a crown of thorns in front of a red halo, with the words BE THOU MY VISION beneath, on the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional Christ portrait with crown of thorns

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A bearded figure of Christ with a crown of thorns and a red halo is shown from the shoulders up, with bold black outlines and solid black hair and beard. Shading is limited to simple gradients in red, orange and yellow across the halo and chest, and the lettering BE THOU MY VISION sits in a curved banner below. The image is a close, centred photo of the tattoo on a limb against a grey fabric background.

Traditional Forearm Halo Portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp in the far pen had guttered out by three, and I was kneeling in straw with my arm inside a ewe who would not stop straining. Dad always said a hard birth was only a matter of patience and clean hands. Mine were neither. Sleet came sideways past the barn door and the wireless had given up somewhere near Shap, so it was just me, the dark, and the ewe's low, complaining grumble.

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The hymn came into my head the way it did every January. Dad hummed it over the ewes, a tune that was really just a growl rising at the ends, with words about being somebody's vision that he'd learned from his mother in a Donegal kitchen he never went back to. At twelve I thought it soppy and told him so. Now I found myself growling it through my teeth, and on the third verse the lamb slid out wet and furious into the straw.

When I'd rubbed it dry with a feed sack, I went to the tack room for twine and found the holy card he kept tucked behind the calendar. It showed a bearded man with thorns round his head and a red ring of light behind him, the kind sold by the box at church bazaars. The red had faded to pink from years of damp and sunlight through the one dirty window, but the lines were still black and sure, and on the back, in his square capitals, he'd written: FOR THE LAMBING.

I pinned it above the lamp hook where it had always hung. The ewe got to her feet, nosed the lamb into shape and started licking, and I sang the wretched tune again, loud enough to carry over the wind.