As a writer I like to understand the origin of words. Take the word "bundling." Today, bundling means including software with a computer purchase. You remember as a toddler mom shouting, "Bundle up before you go out," or "I'll bundle you right off to bed." Well the origins of bundling will give you a real surprise.

Bundling, or "tarrying," goes back to biblical script when Ruth and Boaz met at the threshing floor (Ruth 3). It is defined in a dictionary as "a one-time custom during courtship of unmarried couples occupying the same bed without undressing." In effect it was wrapping people together in a bed, usually as a part of courting behavior, with the aim of allowing intimacy without the possibility of sexual intercourse, and often with parental blessing. It had economic reasons too. On long, cold winter evenings, lying together under the bedcovers saved the expense of using candles and fires that would otherwise have had to be lit for the couple in separate quarters.

There is an 18th century poem that puts it well:

Since in a bed a man and maid,
May bundle and be chaste,
It does no good to burn out wood,
It is needless waste.

There were elaborate ways to practice bundling. It is likely that a form of bundling occurred in our region as the Dutch tradition in the Netherlands was called "queesten," a comparable word for bundling. It is described as "the singular custom of wooing, by which the doors and windows are left open, and the lover, lying or sitting outside the covering, woos the girl who is underneath." There were similar traditions in Germany and Scandinavia, England, and other parts of the old world. In fact the Oxford English Dictionary defines bundling as early as 1781.

It certainly occurred in colonial America and in particular Pennsylvania and New England. It was a common custom among the poor and rural folks where beds were in scarce supply, not to mention the firewood needed to heat at night. Bundling was not confined to lovers in courtship either. Army officers, doctors, candidates for office, even the minister were invited to join the family. The idea was that if both people were "bundled," that is fully clothed, then chances of anything happening were reduced.

Not everyone thought it was moral, especially many in the religious arena. Poems and sermons were written against it, as well those written in favor. Some households used 'centerboards,' slabs of wood that separated the two lovebirds, at least in theory. Bundling was advertised as a way to let single males know a single female was available. Mothers would put a bundling candle in the window. The "date" would enter through the window.

In New York, bundling was known as "questing," probably a derivative of the Dutch "queesten." Washington Irving (Diedrich Knickerbocker) in his History of New York, humorously describes:

"To this sagacious custom, therefore, do I chiefly attribute the unparalleled increase of the Yanokie or Yankee tribe; for it is a certain fact, well authenticated by court records and parish registers, that wherever the practice of bundling prevailed, there was an amazing number of sturdy brats annually born unto the state, without the license of the law, or the benefit of clergy ..."

We know from Jonathan Pearson in his 1883 History of Schenectady Patent, that bundling was performed locally. Pearson states that while the Dutch here kept males and females apart in church they did not elsewhere and in fact talks a great deal about bundling. He goes to mention, "From Notarial Papers of Albany and other sources, tradition being the most prolific as well as the most uncertain, "bundling" was common in the early days along the whole of both sides of the Hudson River and in all the settlements of the back country. As civilization advanced the practice grew into desuetude and along the great highways of travel it had become uncommon before the close of the last century in the cities and towns of this vicinity."

Pearson goes on to say, "In Albany it was said to be a custom along the Mohawk. At Schenectady no one is old enough to remember it as nearer than the Catskills, Helderbergs and Schoharie and German Flats. It is difficult to say where the people there locate it. It is like malaria, always over in the next valley."

Pearson also discusses a few court cases that discussed bundling in Albany County and in Orange County in 1804. In an 1853 case, Graham vs. Smith, witnesses testified that the practice was a universal custom and one 56 year-old woman said it was a custom since she was a kid. Pearson also says that in 1853 it was still being practiced in the backcountry.

There is a record of a young Albany lady in 1658 who's reputation was reputed and in court the principal witness testified that "when we were visiting together," "we slept together in the garret," and also stated that the lady was "perfectly virtuous," a clear example of bundling.

Even in puritanical New England where it was considered rude for a man to even mention a women's leg or knee, it was thought quite civil to ask her to bundle. Often bundling bags (forerunner of today's sleeping bags), pillows, and bolsters were used to separate the two. One Connecticut women was forced by her mother to put both legs in a pillowcase and tied it around her waist. The next morning the innocent maid proclaimed to her mother that everything went well and she only took one leg out during the evening!

In 1937, a magazine published a picture of a married couple in bed, separated by a heavy plank that had twenty-penny spikes driven in toward the wife's side. She went to court for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty. There are numerous funny and not so funny accounts of bundling.

Bundling was known to occur in Pennsylvania as late as 1933 and New Jersey in 1938. On December 12, 1969, Time magazine featured an article on The Society to Bring Back Bundling, which had been formed in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

Today, we have the auto, theaters (drive-ins) and the Mall as places of courtship. And if you think bundling is history, watch a few episodes of MTV's "Real Life," or follow the antics of Michael Jackson.

As for me, the only bundles I want to see have pictures of George Washington on them!