BAGGĀRA ("Cowherds"), African "Arabs" of Semitic origin, so called because they are great cattle owners and breeders. They occupy the country west of the White Nile between the Shilluk territory and Dar Nuba, being found principally in Kordofan. They are true nomad Arabs, having intermarried little with the Nuba, and have preserved most of their national characteristics. The date of their arrival in the Sudan is uncertain: they appear to have drifted up the Nile valley and to have dispossessed the original Nuba population. A purely pastoral people, they move from pasture to pasture, as food becomes deficient. The true Baggāra tribesmen employ oxen as saddle and pack animals, carry no shield, and though many possess firearms the customary weapons are lance and sword. They have always had the reputation of being resolute fighters. Engaged from the earliest times in the slave trade, they were among the first, as they were certainly the most fervent, supporters of the mahdi when he rose in revolt against the Egyptians (1882). They constituted his real fighting force, and to their fanatical courage his victories were due. Their decision to follow him out of their own country to Khartum brought about the fall of that city. The mahdi's successor, the khalifa Abdullah, was a Baggāra, and throughout his rule the tribe held the first place in his favour. They have been described as "men who look the fiends they really are—of most sinister expression, with murder and every crime speaking from their savage eyes. Courage is their only good quality." They are famous, too, as hunters of big game, attacking even elephants with sword and spear. G. A. Schweinfurth declares them the best-looking of the Nile nomads, and the men are types of physical beauty, with fine heads, erect athletic bodies and sinewy limbs. There is little that is Semitic in their appearance. Their skins vary in colour from a dark red-brown to a deep black; but their features are regular and free of negro characteristics. In mental power they are much superior to the indigenous races around them. They have a passion for fine clothes and ornaments, tricking themselves out with glass trinkets, rings and articles of ivory and horn. Their mode of hair-dressing (mop-fashion) earned them, in common with the Hadendoa, the name of "Fuzzy-wuzzies" among the British soldiers in the campaigns of 1884-98.
See G. A. Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa (1874); Sir F. R. Wingate, Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan (1891), Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, edited by Count Gleichen (1905); A. H. Keane, Ethnology of the Egyptian Sudan (1884).
BAGGESEN, JENS IMMANUEL (1764-1826), Danish poet, was born on the 15th of February 1764 at Korsör. His parents were very poor, and before he was twelve he was sent to copy documents at the office of the clerk of the district. He was a melancholy, feeble child, and before this he had attempted suicide more than once. By dint of indomitable perseverance, he managed to gain an education, and in 1782 entered the university of Copenhagen. His success as a writer was coeval with his earliest publication; his Comical Tales in verse, poems that recall the Broad Grins that Colman the younger brought out a decade later, took the town by storm, and the struggling young poet found himself a popular favourite at twenty-one. He then tried serious lyrical writing, and his tact, elegance of manner and versatility, gained him a place in the best society. This sudden success received a blow in 1789, when a very poor opera, Holge Danske, which he had produced, was received with mockery and a reaction against him set in. He left Denmark in a rage and spent the next years in Germany, France and Switzerland. He married at Berne in 1790, began to write in German and published in that language his next poem, Alpenlied. In the winter of the same year he returned to his mother-country, bringing with him as a peace-offering his fine descriptive poem, the Labyrinth, in Danish, and was received with unbounded homage. The next twenty years were spent in incessant restless wanderings over the north of Europe, Paris latterly becoming his nominal home. He continued to publish volumes alternately in Danish and German. Of the latter the most important was the idyllic epos in hexameters called Parthenais (1803). In 1806 he returned to Copenhagen to find the young Öhlenschläger installed as the great poet of the day, and he himself beginning to lose his previously unbounded popularity. Until 1820 he resided in Copenhagen, in almost unceasing literary feud with some one or other, abusing and being abused, the most important feature of the whole being Baggesen's determination not to allow Öhlenschläger to be considered a greater poet than himself. He then left Denmark for the last time and went back to his beloved Paris, where he lost his second wife and youngest child in 1822, and after the miseries of an imprisonment for debt, fell at last into a state of hopeless melancholy madness. In 1826, having slightly recovered, he wished to see Denmark once more, but died in the freemasons' hospital at Hamburg on his way, on the 3rd of October, and was buried at Kiel. His many-sided talents achieved success in all forms of writing, but his domestic, philosophical and critical works have long ceased to occupy attention. A little more power of restraining his egotism and passion would have made him one of the wittiest and keenest of modern satirists, and his comic poems are deathless. The Danish literature owes Baggesen a great debt for the firmness, polish and form which he introduced into it—his style being always finished and elegant. With all his faults he stands as the greatest figure between Holberg and Öhlenschläger. Of all his poems, however, the loveliest and best is a little simple song, There was a time when I was very little, which every Dane, high or low, knows by heart, and which is matchless in its simplicity and pathos. It has outlived all his epics.
(E. G.)
BAGGING, the name given to the textile stuff used for making bags (see also Sacking and Tarpaulin). The material used was originally Baltic hemp, while in the beginning of the 19th century Sunn hemp or India hemp was also employed. Modern requirements call for so many different types of bagging that it is not surprising to find all kinds of fibres used for this purpose. Most bagging is now made from yarns of the jute fibre. The cloth is, in general, woven with the plain weave, and the warp threads run in pairs, but large quantities of bags are made from cloths with single warp threads. In both cases the weave used for the cloth is that shown at A in the figure, but when double threads of warp are used, the arrangement is equivalent to the weave shown at B. The interlacings of the two sets of warp and weft for single and double warp are shown respectively at C and D, the black marks indicating the warp threads, and the white or blanks showing the weft. The particular style of bagging depends, naturally, upon the kind of material it is intended to hold. The coarsest type of bagging is perhaps that known as "cotton bagging," which derives its name from the fact that it is used in the manufacture of bags for transporting raw cotton from the United States of America. It is a heavy fabric 42 in. wide, and weighs from 2 to 2½ lb per yard. A similar, but rather finer make, is used for Sea Island and other fine cotton, and for any species of fibrous material; but for grain, spices, sugar, flour, coffee, manure, &c., the threads of warp and weft must lie closer, and the warp is usually single. For transporting such
substances as sugar, it is not uncommon to line the bag with paper, which excludes foreign matter, and minimizes the loss. Although there are large quantities of seamless bags woven in the loom, the greater part of the cloth is woven in the ordinary way. It is then cut up into the required sizes by hand and by special machines, and afterwards sewn by one of the chain-stitch or straight-stitch bag sewing-machines.
BAGHAL, a small native state in the Punjab, India. It is one of the group known as the Simla Hill states, and has an area of 124 sq. m.; pop. (1901) 25,720, showing an increase of 5% in the decade; a revenue £3300.
BAGHERIA, a town of the province of Palermo, Sicily, 8 m. by rail E. by S. of Palermo. Pop. (1901) 18,218. It contains many villas of the aristocracy of Palermo, the majority of which were erected in the 18th century, but have now fallen into decay.
BAGILLT, a town of Flintshire, North Wales, 14½ m. from Chester, on the London & North Western railway, in the ancient parish of Holywell. Pop. (1901) 2637. Its importance is due to its zinc, lead, iron, alkali and kindred works, and its collieries. Above Bagillt is Bryn Dychwelwch, "Hill of Retreat," so called from the retreat effected by Owen Gwynedd, when pursued by Henry II., with superior numbers. Near is Mostyn Hall, dating from the time of Henry VI., the seat of one of the oldest Welsh families. Here are antiquities and MSS. (old British history and Welsh, brought from Gloddaeth), a harp dated 1568, torques (torchau), &c. Henry VII., then earl of Richmond, is said to have been concealed here in the reign of Richard III., when the lord of Mostyn was Richard ap Howel.