Black traditional-style swallow flying over waves and a sun, printed as a graphic on a grey vest top against a teal wooden background.

Traditional swallow over waves design

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A bold black swallow in flight, with swept-back wings and a spiked outline, sits in front of a sun or halo shape and above three rows of wavy lines. The design is solid black on a heather grey tank top, with no shading or fine detail, and the shirt is shown flat against weathered teal boards.

Traditional Swallow Bird Wave Sun Sea Sailor

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tomas Rudd had worked the sound off Carrick Holm for thirty-one years and had never once turned back for weather. That was what his mother told the priest, anyway. What he actually had was a habit of watching the swallows. In April they came low over the harbour wall, sweeping the water so close their wingtips seemed to kiss the swell, and by August they were gone south again, leaving the net loft quiet.

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The year the Mary Ellen went down off the Skerry, he was the only one who came back. He had been hauling pots with his brother Alf when the glass dropped faster than anyone could swear about it. They rowed for four hours through a sea like grey hills. Alf stopped answering somewhere past the second hour. Tomas kept pulling toward the one swallow that circled the boat, dipping its head to the crests as if it knew the channel better than he did, until the light came up over the Holm and the bird peeled off toward the harbour like it had somewhere to be.

After that he would not go out past the Skerry. He took the ferry run instead, back and forth across the sound with crates of sheep, the post and whatever the mainland wanted that week. Some mornings a swallow skimmed the wake alongside the boat, and he never told anyone that he nodded at it.

On the last crossing of the season he cut the engine a hundred yards out and let the boat drift. The bird came down to the waves, touched them once, and rose straight past the sun on the water. Tomas kept his eyes on it until there was nothing left but the sea.