Folk music is the music of the people. "For hundreds of years people have made songs of stories and great ballads. Sometimes they've been adapted from published broadside ballads, but many just appeared and were shaped slowly. Equally, some folk tunes were adapted from popular dances, and others simply developed."
Folk music is described as a ballad or song which is not written down, they were passed down from one person to the next.
Bibliography:
www.musiclessonsonline.co.uk/FolkMusic.html
www.balladtree.com/folk101/002a_origins.html