Passing the night together, with clothes on. An old and obsolete custom.
1775. Bundling is described under the name of tarrying, by Andrew Burnaby, ‘Travels in North America,’ pp. 183–4.
1781. Notwithstanding the modesty of the females is such, that it would be accounted the greatest rudeness for a gentleman to speak before a lady of a garter, knee, or leg, yet it is thought but a piece of civility to ask her to BUNDLE; a custom as old as the first settlement in 1634.—Samuel Peters, ‘History of Connecticut,’ p. 325 (Lond.). [The author does not consider bundling more immoral than sitting together on a “sopha”: pp. 327–9.]
1801. Thomas Paine has called [the book of Ruth] an idle, bundling story.—The Port Folio, i. 308 (Phila.).
1801. [She observed] that it was the fashion in that town to b-ndle.—Spirit of the Farmer’s Museum, p. 194.
1809. He swore that he would have nothing more to do with such a squatting, bundling, guessing, questioning, swapping, pumkin-eating, molasses-daubing, shingle-splitting, cider-watering, horse-jockeying, notion-peddling crew.—W. Irving, ‘A History of New-York,’ i. 220 (1812).
1809. The custom to which I allude was vulgarly known by the name of bundling.—Id., i. 181 (1812). (Italics in the original.)
1809. He still remembered the frolicking and dancing and bundling, and other disports of the east country.—Id., ii. 180.
1825. The very “bundling” of the Dutch settlers; that mischievous, wicked habit, which is now spreading through the frontier settlements.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ i. 118.
1825.
| In one of those industrious Yankee States, | |
| So fam’d for bundling, onions, notions, codfish, | |
| For lean lank-sided schoolmasters, and oddfish, | |
| For wooden nutmegs, trenchers, pewter plates, | |
| There dwelt a maiden lady. | |
New-Harmony Gazette, Nov. 30, p. 80/1. |
1825. I also fully believed that the people were a bundling, gouging, drinking, spitting, impious race, without either morals, literature, religion, or refinement; and that the turbulent spirit of democrary was altogether incompatible with any state of society becoming a civilized nation.—J. K. Paulding, ‘John Bull in America,’ p. 2 (N.Y.).
1828. See a paper on Bundling in The Yankee (Portland, Maine), p. 258.
1844. His friends suggested that this was like what was called bundling in New Jersey. We don’t (said he) want to have any bundling with the States.—Mr. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, House of Representatives, Feb. 14: Congressional Globe, p. 277.
