"Fling in the Hay"

The instances of 'fling in the hay' I've been able to uncover in early (before 1995) popular news venues suggest that the phrase may have emerged as a synonym of 'roll in the hay' sometime before the 1980s.

The first appearance I found, in a hostile and contemptuous 1981 review (paywalled) of a stage play, A Very Modest Orgy, greatly embellished the phrase, and seemed to be chiefly an attempt to dress up 'roll in the hay' with more contemporary language:

Phoebe...may well want to test the unlikely sensual possibilities of a whipped-cream fling in the hay loft with another couple willing to swap sexual stamps.

Edmonton Journal (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) 13 Oct 1981, p. 31.

In the review, 'fling' means "a short period of unrestrained pursuit of one's wishes or desires" (Dictionary.com).

The second appearance I found was a 1983 teaser (paywalled) for an advice column:

So, if his wife wants to have a little fling in the hay, what the hey?

News-Press (Fort Myers, Florida) 05 Nov 1983, p. 41.

This 'fling' means what it did in the earlier use. All told, I don't see a material difference between the meaning of this "fling in the hay" and the meaning of the more common phrase 'roll in the hay'.

The third appearance I found was, like the first, embedded in a hostile review; the subject of the 1984 review (paywalled) was a mini-series TV adaptation of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.

It concerns Jake Barnes, ...who has been emasculated by a German grenade — a matter of great concern to Lady Brett Ashley, who loves him dearly but can't do without her flings in the hay.

It could be argued with some justice that "rolls" would not work as well as "flings" in that sentence. However, the meaning is the same: 'fling' is used in the sense cited above, and 'the hay' is used in a sense recorded by OED (paywalled):

the hay: colloq. phr. for 'bed'; esp. in phrases to roll in the hay.

The fourth appearance of 'fling in the hay' I found in a 1987 promotional blurb (paywalled) for the 1964 James Bond movie Goldfinger:

The movie is remembered...for Bond's...fast fling in the hay with Pussy Galore....

All told, then, the sense of 'fling in the hay' I'm understanding from the uses so far is "a short period of unrestrained pursuit of one's wishes or desires" "in bed". The phrase with 'fling', like the phrase with 'roll', refers to "a brief sexual liaison". If there is any difference between the phrase with 'fling' and the phrase with 'roll', it is that 'fling' more readily admits interpretation as being a longer period than 'roll'.

The 1980s seem to have been the heyday for the 'in the hay' phrase with 'fling'. After 1987, the next appearance I found was in 1995, eight years later. After that appearance, 'fling in the hay' in the print press (at least so far as the Newspapers.com corpus is concerned) disappears for nine years, reappearing in 2004. Both the 1995 and the 2004 appearances were uses in the same sense as 'roll in the hay'.

"Fling in the hay" is a slightly mixed expression combining a "fling", meaning a brief sexual dalliance with no commitment, and "roll in the hay" meaning a casual sexual encounter (which may or may not be literally in the hay, depending on environment, but is probably somewhere other than a comfortable bed).

The modified expression probably extends "roll in the hay" to a few encounters, but not to the level of any kind of real relationship.