Note 557 — Chapter XII · OBLIGATORY CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES

Stiles, Bundling in its Origin, Progress, and Decline (Albany, 1871), 13, 14. Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, thus explains the practice: "A man and a woman lying on the same bed with their clothes on; an expedient practiced in America on a scarcity of beds, when, on such occasions, husbands and parents frequently permitted travelers to bundle with their wives and daughters." This applies, of course, only to the first named and less interesting form of the custom. In almost the same words as those used by Stiles, Masson, Journeys in Belochistan, Afghanistan, etc., III, 287, describes the bundling of lovers among the Afghans: see Adams, Some Phases of Sexual Immorality, 31, note. In general on this custom consult Earle, Customs and Fashions, 62-64; Weeden, Ecc. and Soc. Hist. of N. E., II, 739, 864.