Colour traditional tattoo of a swallow with orange and red swirls and a banner on the back of a hand, with a partly visible red and green design above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional swallow with swirls on a hand

Traditional · Hand · Colour · Photo

A swallow in flight with dark grey-black wings, a red breast and a small white eye sits at the centre of the design, with a dark banner or leaf shape beneath it. Orange and red swirls curl around the bird and trail towards the wrist, and a partly cropped red and green design appears at the top of the frame. Bold black outlines define the shapes, and the colour is solid with smooth shading on the wings.

Traditional Hand Swallow Bird Swirl Banner Skull Leaf

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, sit down, the lot of you, the cake isn't going anywhere and neither am I. My grandmother had a swallow on her hand, did you know that? Blue-black wings, a red breast like a fresh cut, and a little banner under it with nothing written on it, because she said a swallow never needed telling who it was.

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She came from Mousehole, where the boats came in on the tide and the men went out on it. Her Tomas sailed one March after the herring, and the wind turned round behind him. For three weeks the boats sat in the harbour with the nets drying on the wall. Nobody said he was dead. Nobody said much of anything.

Then one morning in April a swallow came in through the open door of the chapel loft where she was sat folding the washing. It flew three slow circles over the kettle and settled on the sill. She said it had the look of a man who'd walked a long way. She put out a crust, and the bird didn't touch it. It just looked at her, then went out over the harbour wall as if it had been told the way.

Tomas came up the lane that evening with salt in his beard and a split oar over his shoulder. He was no swallow, mind. But she never once forgot that bird, and that's why she had it inked on her hand, so she'd see it every time she reached for the bread. So lift your glasses to this pair, and may they find their way home every spring.