This is a folk tale about two young lovers whose families are bitter enemies like the Montagues and Capulets or the Hatfields and the McCoys. The lovers live in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains where the landed gentry of British ancestry have settled. To escape the wrath of their warring families, the lovers elope to Appalachia where the mountain people of Scots-Irish ancestry live. They are welcomed by these people, but they bring with them their aristocratic notions and way of life that are ill-suited to life in the mountains. And herein lies their tragedy.