tragic love and closed minds all around

This was not an "Appalachian legend", as one local paper called it.
The other local paper referred to the tale as "subversive", though that's not it, either.
So, just what is it?
"Dark Of The Moon" is an American play written during World War II, wrapped around "Barbara Allen", a centuries-old Scotch ballad of love gone wrong. The Collective Face Theatre Ensemble kept the original time period intact, as well as the setting in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.
It's important to realize, in this day of instant communication options and a tv in every room of a house, that life in the 1940's was very different. There may have been a phone in the community, but that would have been for emergencies. No television would have existed there for another decade. Television was not in the United States until the mid-1940's, and then sparingly. My mother used to talk of the families gathering at the home of the one neighbor who had a tv, to watch a televised show. My mother was born in late 1937. That memory was from her childhood in Augusta, Georgia, folks, a well-populated city. Remote locations, such as the Appalachian areas from Georgia to New York, would not even have had television reception. Any news or culture from the outside would have to come in print or by radio, but that would have been AM only, with spotty reception. Indeed, it wasn't until after the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965 that many remote areas had electricity, as they lacked roads and many other services.
That meant that in such a rural mountain community, regardless of locale in the northern or southern USA, life lived seventy years ago by the younger people was nearly identical to that of their grandparents, with almost no influx of new ideas or new people.
Take a moment, please, to imagine that.
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Now, consider a tiny community in a valley in those isolating mountains. Their entertainment had to be made on-site, consisting of folks using home-made fiddles and such. Singing and dancing were highlights, folk songs and ballads brought by the original settlers from their European homes in mountainous terrain. Those folks - Scots and Irish - brought their accents, their customs, their superstitions, and their religion with them. The town had endured for all those years, continuing the hard life of their ancestors, taking care of their own and avoiding strangers.
Another tiny community lived on a nearby mountaintop. Their origins? Who knows. Their entertainment was also made on-site, using local materials as well as their bodies to provide the rhythm for their dancing and singing. They practiced a pagan religion involving moon idolatry and were called witches by the townfolk in the valley below. Their group had endured for all those years, continuing the hard life of their ancestors, taking care of their own and avoiding strangers.
Both communities were self-marginalized from the rest of society.
Both communities wanted life to continue as it always had.
Both communities allowed their folk to have sexual freedom.
Let's take a moment to consider that scene.
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From the midst of that stagnation in both communities arose two youths who dared defy tradition for the sake of love.
Witch-boy and the auburn-haired girl from town had met one night when the moon went dark. Lunar eclipse, perhaps? In the heat of the moment, they had sex, resulting in her becoming pregnant and him falling love with her.
Maybe not quite the tale of Romeo and his Juliet, but certainly star-crossed.
(Get that little joke? Because of the moon and such, right?)
The witch-boy, John, is determined to be with her, even though he will have to change his form and his life. No more riding the backs of eagles, no more lolling about all day. As a human, he will have hard work in the fields ahead of him. Nonetheless, he chooses that path of most resistance, as that path will be shared with Barbara Allen.
For her part, the garrulous and promiscuous lass will pledge to be true to him alone, for an entire year, as his wife. That act would require her to go against her community of stranger-haters.
She is not alone in that task. The witch community is also full of stranger-haters and is not willing to release John to life as a human, to life with a human.
It's a hard row they've both chosen to walk, beset by saboteurs on both sides...
but they're in love and are willing to walk that path.
Do they succeed?
Of course not.
I said this was a tragic romance.
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I found the story very entertaining and quite well-acted - bravo, y'all!
But I very much enjoyed the music, both the rollicking folk tunes and the old-time religious hymns. I even found myself silently singing along to all of the hymns except one. They aren't the songs from my Methodist experience, but I recalled them from my youth as a Baptist. (These town folk weren't Baptists, though, as dancing would not have been sanctioned.)
I highly recommend it, folks.
If there's one lesson from this play to take to heart, it's this one:
We all need to get out more.
We all need to interact more...
with people from different geographical areas...
with people from different cultures...
with people with different faiths...
with people who walk different paths.
Each and every one of us.
Each and every one of us have so much to learn from another.
Amen.