There's a cool piece on Nerve about prodigious premarital nookie among America's 18th-century frontiers-folk. I don't think Laura Ingalls Wilder knew about this, and if she did, she sure wasn't telling.
Nights were cold, beds were in short supply, and settlements were far apart. Therefore, if a young man came a-calling, instead of his beau's [sic] parents sending him home (through woods crawling with Native Americans eager to renegotiate unfavorable real estate deals with a hatchet or knife); requiring the couple to stay up all night and waste the family's entire supply of firewood; or forcing the poor guy to sleep in the barn and die of hypothermia, they would tuck the young couple into bed together. Some sources insist the lovers were wrapped up like mummies and separated by a "bundling board" (try finding one of those on Antiques Roadshow). Others held that couples would commonly strip to the waist and climb into bed together, there to do what they pleased, separated by a sheet or even less. The results were predictable. In the pious 1600s, only one out of ten New England women had a child before eight months of marriage, but by the mid-1700s, the number had quadrupled to four out of ten.
[via Fark]
It should be belle instead of beau.
Therefore, if a young man came a-calling, instead of his beau's [sic] parents sending him home (through woods crawling with Native Americans eager to renegotiate unfavorable real estate deals with a hatchet or knife);
Posted by: I think | Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 09:02 AM
Oui, je sais. C'était pas mon mot, comprenez?
Posted by: Rogier | Saturday, October 21, 2006 at 09:36 AM