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In Burnaby's version of bundling, as practised in Massachusetts, the suitor asks permission of the girl's parents to tarry with her one night in order to pay court to her. At their usual time the old couple retire to bed, leaving the young ones to settle matters as they can; who, after having sat up as long as they think proper, get into bed together also, but without pulling off their undergarments in order to prevent scandal. If the parties agree, it is all very well; the banns are published and they are married without delay. If not, they part, and possibly never see each other again; unless, which is an accident that seldom happens, the forsaken fair one prove pregnant and then the man is obliged to marry her under pain of excommunication.
Such customs, in a country cut off from civilized influences, could only proceed from simplicity and innocence, thought -Burnaby, (others thought that such comments could only proceed from the same). Forms and observances, Burnaby was convinced, were necessary only in proportion as manners were corrupted and it became necessary to guard against vice and duplicity.
This traveller, it will be noticed, treats bundling as a one-night-only performance; but in other accounts it appears that sweethearts are allowed to bundle as often as they wish.
The Reverend Samuel Peters (stigmatized as 'a liar, a scoundrel and a quisling' by Reginald Reynolds in Beds) puts up a lively defence of bundling in his General History of Connecticut (1781). Much of what Peters says on the subject must be taken with reserve. He contends that the custom goes back to the first Puritan settlement of 1634. Children were brought up to fear an omniscient God who could see in the dark and was unlikely 'to behold iniquity with approbation'; therefore no iniquity was perpetrated. Persons 'influenced more by lust than a serious faith in God' were incapable of honourable bundling.
If any man, thus a stranger to the love of virtue, of God and the Christian religion, should bundle with a young lady in New England and behave himself unseemly towards her he must first melt her into passion and expel death and hell from her mind or he will undergo the chastisement of negroes turned mad; if he escapes with his life it will be owing to the parents flying from their beds to protect him. |