Yes, it was called bundling back then and Ruth, Miriam's mother, used the same bundling bag she herself had been forced to use when as a teenager, she made the long trip from Portsmouth to New England.
We were betrothed that first time, Miriam and I, when with the approval of our parents, we were bedded together. Miriam was in bed before me, her head showing from the bundling bag that her mother had firmly but loosely tied at the neck. Getting close was further complicated by a board that stood lengthwise between us. Our parents, as was the custom of the Puritans, were taking no chances with the fires of the flesh.
"Boaz, my darling Boaz," she whispered, sure her parents were at last asleep.
"Miriam, this board, it lifts quite easily from its slots," said I in a hushed voice.
"It was meant to be," she coaxed.
I laid it aside and felt for her and tried the knot which was too firmly tied. She lay on her back and for the first time, I kissed her full on the mouth. She responded hungrily, all her instincts on go. I laid hands on her searchingly but she was too well shielded by the bag and her clothes.
"Hold on Bo. Patience."
I could feel her struggling to shed her duds, so I undressed as well. It was customary to bed down in one's clothes back then, the fire dampened down to conserve fuel, and frost entering the house on winter nights. I pulled the covers over us.
"Hold me tight," she whispered, nibbling my ear.
I straddled her, her warm voluptuousness immediately responding to my weight but it was still an impossible distance the bag put between us. Then I found what pleased. Where I had pitied her tender skin against the coarse hessian, my fingers proved a boon. Its rough texture stirred her nipples erect, her cunny to a dampness that I could feel through the cloth until struggling like ferrets in a sack, she came. These last things I describe in hindsight for though I was highly aware of my own lust, I had no idea until then what it was like for a woman.
"Boaz, Boaz, my sweet and tender Boaz," she whispered when it was done.
I smiled to myself in the dark knowing she was totally unaware of the swamp my lust had made of my neckerchief. So much for bundling I thought, so much for romance but that's how it was in the beginning, away back then.
BIO: Stan Long lives mostly in his head, a place he likes except when his mind and his screen go blank, then he must wait like some patient fisherman in an ice hut on a winter lake and wait for shapes to rise and be given form that he might make sense of them.