Family Lessons 145: Tuger the Elder

I have found the name of my oldest known relative, by which I refer to the date of his birth rather than the long years he still enjoys in the local care home. He was called Tuger the Elder (‘senex’) who held the manor of Bold in south Lancashire probably around the time of King Stephen (1135-1154), twenty-eight generations ago. The name of his son through whom I descend is not recorded, but the fact that Tuger is called ‘the Elder’ might indicate his son was ‘Tuger the Younger.’

The Elder’s grandson died in 1211, so 1090-1130 would be a reasonable timeframe for Grandpa Tuger to have entered this world. I can find little of his peculiar name’s origins; no evidence exists of its usage by the Saxon English, though Toggi is an old Icelandic name and I once taught a Danish boy called Toger, so I suspect that Tuger the Elder was of Scandinavian, 'Viking' stock.

The only other details recorded of Old Tuger’s life is that of his separating some land called ‘La Quick’ from out of his demesne (estate). A curious name for a parcel of land, it means ‘life’ rather than fast (as in “the quick and the dead”). The Etymonline site explains that it comes from from Old English cwic meaning ‘living, alive, animate’. Curiously, the Old High German quec means ‘lively’ and gives modern German keck which means bold or sassy. ‘Bold’ was the remaining part of Tuger’s manor.

Tuger has been dead for nearly a thousand years, and I am unlikely to be alone among his descendants. He owned (subject to feudal dues) at least two areas of land the names of which mean ‘life’ or ‘living’, and from them he grew food which nourished him and his dependents. Like all medieval folk, though, his estates went to others, and his own body he could not retain, for life itself is only leased to us, not owned. His land meant life but his body meant death; his estate was living but his time was borrowed.

Everything you have, including your body, you shall lose. Only Jesus Christ is the life and treasure we are able to keep, and who is worth the keeping; all else is loss.

For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? Luke 9:25