BABA MUSTAPHA, a cobbler who sewed together the four pieces into which Cassim’s body had been cleft by the forty thieves.  When the thieves discovered that the body had been taken away, they sent one of the band into the city, to ascertain who had died of late.  The man happened to enter the cobbler’s stall, and falling into a gossip heard about the body which the cobbler had sewed together.  Mustapha pointed out to him the house of Cassim Baba’s widow, and the thief marked it with a piece of white chalk.  Next day the cobbler pointed out the house to another, who marked it with red chalk.  And the day following he pointed it out to the captain of the band, who instead of marking the door studied the house till he felt sure of recognizing it.—­Arabian Nights ("Ali Baba, or The Forty Thieves").

BABABALOUK, chief of the black eunuchs, whose duty it was to wait on the sultan, to guard the sultanas, and to superintend the harem.—­Habesci, State of the Ottoman Empire, 155-6.

BABES IN THE WOOD, insurrectionary hordes that infested the mountains of Wicklow and the woods of Enniscarthy towards the close of the eighteenth century. (See CHILDREN IN THE WOOD.)

BABIE, old Alice Gray’s servant-girl.—­Sir W. Scott, Bride of Lammermoor (time, William III.).

BABIECA (3 syl.), the Cid’s horse.

  I learnt to prize Babieca from his head unto his
  hoof.

The Cid (1128).

BABOON (Philip), Philippe Bourbon, duc d’Anjou.

Lewis Baboon, Louis XIV., “a false loon of a grandfather to Philip, and one that might justly be called a Jack-of-all-trades.”

Sometimes you would see this Lewis Baboon behind his counter, selling broad-cloth, sometimes measuring linen; next day he would be dealing in mercery-ware; high heads, ribbons, gloves, fans, and lace, he understood to a nicety ... nay, he would descend to the selling of tapes, garters, and shoebuckles.  When shop was shut up he would go about the neighborhood, and earn half-a-crown, by teaching the young men and maidens to dance.  By these means he had acquired immense riches, which he used to squander away at back-sword [in war], quarter-staff, and cudgel-play, in which he took great pleasure.—­Dr. Arbuthnot, History of John Bull, ii. (1712).

BABY BELL, the infant whose brief beautiful life is given in the poem that first drew the eyes of the world to the young American poet, T.B.  Aldrich, then but nineteen years of age.

  Have you not heard the poets tell
  How came the dainty Baby Bell
  Into this World of ours? 
  The gates of heaven were left ajar: 
  With folded hands and dreamy eyes,
  Wandering out of Paradise,
  She saw this planet like a star
  Hung in the glistening depths of even,—­
  Its bridges, running to and fro,
  O’er which the white-winged angels go,
  Bearing the holy dead to heaven. 
  She touched a bridge of flowers—­those feet
  So light they did not bend the bells
  Of the celestial asphodels,
  They fell like dew upon the flowers;
  Then all the air grew strangely sweet! 
  And thus came dainty Baby Bell
  Into this world of ours. (1854.)