Thank you for recommending cwm. It checks a lot of boxes for me.

[ ] written in C

[ ] small

[ ] no bar by default

[ ] license that is appealing to me - ISC

[ ] config file that is not XML (which can be bulky, cumbersome)

I installed in on Devuan and have been experimenting with the configuration. It is taking me a while to figure out setting keyboard shortcuts I want, but shouldn't take me too much longer. So far, I really like it.