BARBARA HOLABIRD, the rattle-pate of the Holabird sisters in A.D.T. Whitney's _We Girls_. She coins words and bakes lace-edged griddle-cakes and contrives rhymes, and tells on the last page of the book how it was made. "We rushed in, especially I, Barbara, and did little bits, and so it came to be a Song o' Sixpence, and at last four Holabirds were 'singing in the pie.'"--(1868.) BARBARA'S HISTORY, story of young, untrained but bright and attractive girl who marries a man of the world. The conflict of two strong, wayward natures is long and fierce, resulting in temporary separation, and the discipline of sorrow and absence in reconciliation.--Amelia B. Edwards. BARBAROSSA ("_red beard_"), surname of Frederick I. of Germany (1121-1190). It is said that he never died, but is still sleeping in Kyffhauserberg in Thuringia. There he sits at a stone table with his six knights, waiting the "fulness of time," when he will come from his cave to rescue Germany from bondage, and give her the foremost place of all the-world. His beard has already grown through the table-slab, but must wind itself thrice round the table before his second advent. (See MANSUR, CHARLEMAGNE, ABTHUR, DESMOND, SEBASTIAN I., to whom similar legends are attached.) Like Barbarossa, who sits in a cave, Taciturn, sombre, sedate, and grave. Longfellow, _The Golden Legend_. _Barbarossa_, a tragedy by John Brown. This is not Frederick Barbarossa, the emperor of Germany (1121-1190), but Horne Barbarossa, the corsair (1475-1519). He was a renegade Greek, of Mitylenê, who made himself master of Algeria, which was for a time subject to Turkey. He killed the Moorish king; tried to cut off Selim the son, but without success; and wanted to marry Zaphi'ra, the king's widow, who rejected his suit with scorn, and was kept in confinement for seven years. Selim returned unexpectedly to Algiers, and a general rising took place; Barbarossa was slain by the insurgents; Zaphira was restored to the throne; and Selim her son married Irenê the daughter of Barbarossa (1742). BAR'BARA (_St._), the patron saint of arsenals. When her father was about to strike off her head, she was killed by a flash of lightning. BARBASON, the name of a demon. Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer well; Barbason well; yet they are ... the names of fiends.--_Merry Wives of Windsor_, ii. 2. I am not Barbason, you cannot conjure me.--_Henry V_. ii. 1. BAR'BASON, the name of a demon mentioned in _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, act ii. sc. 2 (1596). I am not Barbason; you cannot conjure me.--Shakespeare, _Henry V_. act ii. sc. I (1599). BARBY ELSTER, sharp-tongued and sweet-hearted "help" in the Rossiter family in Susan Warner's _Queechy_. She considers herself her employers' more-than-equal and loses no opportunity of expressing the conviction.--(1852.)