Night on Bald Mountain 25 December 1858, has been interpreted as an indication of Mussorgsky's intent to write an opera on the subject of Gogol's short story "St. John's Eve" (, "Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala", "St. John's Eve"). Gogol's tale contains the elements of witchcraft common to other stories in the "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka" collection, but does not feature a witches' sabbath. No further plans for this project were mentioned. The theme of a witches' sabbath, the central theme in all subsequent "Night on Bald Mountain" projects, appears to have been derived from the nonextant play "The Witch" (, "Ved′ma") by
Rer Bare people Rer Bare people The Rer Bare (or Rerebere, Adona) are a tribe in Ethiopia's eastern Ogaden region on the Shabele River, near Somalia, who currently speak Somali. They appear to have shifted to Somali from a now-extinct language. Their unattested but apparently non-Somali language seems to have been first mentioned in print by Lionel Bender in 1975: Others have linked the Rer Bare to the Bantu language family, implying that they may be the remnants of a Bantu-speaking pre-Somali population or, like the "Somali Bantu" in the Jubba River valley of southern Somalia, the descendants of Bantu slaves imported from