"I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind almost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when exhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or universality."

This is a paradigm of a sentence so complex, and so crammed full of at times almost unintelligible words and phrases, each of which appears intended to convey some deep and meaningful relationship with each of the other almost unintelligible words and phrases contained within the sentence, that one might almost imagine, were one to be in the mood for such imaginings, that the philosophy at the core of such a sentence could possibly be quite as complex as the philosophy at the core of the deceptively simple question 'What is folk music', were anyone to ask such a question; unlikely though it incontestably is, that the asking of the aforementioned question would ever occur to those who contribute to a folk music website such as that within which we currently find ourselves.