Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also bantlin, banty) a child, often illegitimate.

1593		M. Drayton Eclogue VIII in Chalmers IV (1810) 440/2: Lovely Venus stands to give the aim, smiling to see her wanton bantling’s game.
1635		F. Quarles Emblems II viii 93: See how the dancing bells turn round and ring / To please my bantling!
1637		N. Whiting Albino and Bellama 131: Mantles and clouts to wrap their bantlins in.
1641		R. Brome Jovial Crew Act II: She’l have the Bantling at her back to-morrow That was to-day in her belly.
1656		‘Basilius Musophilus’ Don Zara Del Fogoy 135: Thy breeding no better then that the Boars of Belgia afford their swat-bodies Bantlings.
1665		‘R.M.’ Scarronides 15: My pretty bantlings, great and small.
1674		Head Canting Academy (2nd edn) 32: The Bantlings for a good round sum are sent to us to be nursed.
1675		Fumblers-Hall 15: The Taylors man in Black-Fryers had taken measure of your hide for a young bantling.
1686		Dorset ‘A Faithful Catalogue of our most Eminent Ninnies’ in Works (1720) 35: Our Chyro MedicaDydimus nothing smelt, / ’Till he the sprawling Bantling heard and felt.
1696		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719) I 187: Oh, Sisters, what shall we now do, / For all our young Bantlings we have but one Father.
1707		Fifteen Comforts of a Wanton Wife 2: Next comes a little Bantling to Town, / Which the unthinking Cuckold calls his own.
1721		in Penkethman’s Jests II 9: For all our young Bantlings we have but one Father.
1734		C. Johnson Hist. of Highwaymen &c 322: The old Gentleman [...] reckon’d up all the Charges that a Bantling would bring upon him.
1748		Smollett Roderick Random (1979) 279: That he may at once deliver himself from the importunities of the mother, and the expense of her bantling.
1756		W. Toldervy Hist. of the Two Orphans IV 12: I shall take speedy methods to rid myself, not only of the bantling, but of thee also.
1763		G.A. Stevens in Adventures of a Speculist (1788) II 39: Round her neck the tender bantling clings, She dandles the baby, and baby-like sings.
1770		Midnight Rambler 19: He took the bantling in his arms.
1785		‘Peter Pindar’ ‘The Lousiad’ Works (1794) I 236: A black cat round the bantling squall’d.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) II 54: No bantling that’s unborn shall view / A stick of what they’re doing now.
1800		‘The Happy Virgin’ Songster’s Companion 19: No bantlings to tease her, or break her night’s rest.
1809		W. Irving Knickerbocker (N.Y.) 48: A tender virgin, accidentally and unaccountably enriched with a bantling.
1821		W. Combe Doctor Syntax, Wife (1868) 340/1: She would [...] Have made me father of the child, And sworn that you to hide my sin, Had ta’en th’ adult’rous bantling in.
1825		Sydney Gaz. 3 Mar. 3/4: The bubble and squeak whimpering of his whining bantling.
1837		Marryat Snarleyyow III (Calcutta edn) 175: And over how many years do they extend their pages! while our bantling is produced in the regular nine months.
1842		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 1 Jan. n.p.: The aristocratic bantlings of whom we have been speaking.
1851		G. Borrow Lavengro I 65: What do you mean, ye Bengui’s bantling?
1864		J. Rogers New Rush 45: Among his lubras, dogs, and bantlings, mix’d.
1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1908		R.S. Baker Following the Colour Line 118: In short, they have ‘cast the bantling on the rocks’.
1948		J. O’Connor Come Day – Go Day (1984) 55: Where’s the banty?
1984		R. Wilder You All Spoken Here 98: Come-by-chance child: Illegitimate; woods colt; bush colt; catch colt; old field colt; outsider; volunteer; yard child; bantlin’.

2. in fig. use, i.e. that which is weak, unformed.

1812		‘Drury Lane Hustings’ in H. Smith Rejected Addresses 83: The newest of all is the new House of Commons, / ’Tis a rickety sort of a bantling I’m told, / It will die of old age when it’s seven years old.
1848		G.W.M. Reynolds Mysteries of London II 2nd Ser. 47: And be what title d’ye mane to call this purty little bantling of your’s, Misther Styles?
1872		C.L. Brace Dangerous Classes of NY 382: The new Institution, if wise, would now prefer to turn over its assets and machinery to the old; but, ten to one, the new workers have an especial pride in their bantling, and cannot bear to abandon it.
1887		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Oct. 14/4: O! I think the brightest bantlings of a ready writer’s brain / Too often bring but little in the way of world gain / To the author of their being; and that others reap, instead, / The fruits of all his labours when he himself is dead.
1895		Nottingham Eve. Post 4 May 2/7: It seems that he is so devoted to the fortune of his own bantling, the local Veto Bill, that he is willing [...] to stake everything upon it.
1900		Sporting Times 10 Feb. 2/2: I have naturally taken some little interest in the career of my initial bantling [...] going into many editions.
1913		Nottingham Eve. Post 27 Sept. 7/1: [He] described the last Education Bill as a poor little bantling.