Bundling

Bundling (or "tarrying") comprises a number of socially condoned courtship practices primarily documented among northern and northeastern European Christian communities as well as among homogeneous, non-urban Christian communities in the United States. The practice is documentable from the late Middle Ages until its dwindling in the nineteenth century, with some anecdotal evidence of its continued existence into the early twentieth century. The practices of bundling revolve around a young, unmarried man sleeping, fully clothed, in the same bed as a young, unmarried woman. These non-urban communities are usually small in scale and primarily practice agriculture. Communities practicing bundling were close-knit, in that the young men and woman knew each other, as did their respective families.

Details of this practice vary from whether the woman wore clothes or a night dress, was sewn into a sack (bundling sack), lay under the covers and the male above the covers, both lay under the covers or both were on top, whether there was a board placed between them (bundling board), whether the couple was sleeping in the same room or same building as the guardians or in a separate building, whether there was a candle in a particular window, and whether the door or the window must be rapped upon in a particular way. The young man and woman were not normally joined by other young men and women. This practice contrasts with the practice of inviting all the young people of the community to a festival which included sleeping in the same barn or outbuilding.

Bundling was performed with the full knowledge and assent of families and the community. Many reasons are given for this practice: finding compatible marriage partners, permitting courtship while not wasting firewood and candles, and communal recognition of sex without penetration among the young in courting. Another reason given in the United States is that distances between homesteads on the frontier required a young man to spend the night when courting a woman.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aurand, A. Monroe, Jr. 1941. Little Known Facts about Bundling in the New World. Harrisburg, PA: Author.

Fischer-Yinon, Yochi. 2002. "The Original Bundlers: Boaz and Ruth, and Seventeenth-Century English Courtship Practices." Journal of Social History 35 (3): 683-705.

Hoffman, W. J. 1888. "Folk-Lore of the Pennsylvania Germans, Part I." The Journal of American Folklore 1(2): 125-135.

Gjerde, Jon. 1985. From Peasants to Farmers: The Migration from Balestrand, Norway, to the Upper Middle West. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leeuwen, Marco H.D. van. 2002. "Partner Choice and Homogamy in the Nineteenth Century: Was There a Sexual Revolution in Europe?" Journal of Social History 36 (1): 101-123.

                                         Carol E.B. Choksy