Tom;
"Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are: (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.
The term can be applied to music that has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular and art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community.
The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character."
What quarrel do you have with that - or what characteristics does your music have that will fit into that definition.
I could put up 'Some Conclusions' from which this was derived, and which fully covers (not always accurately) the sources of the songs and music - or the 16 page version from Funk and Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of Folklore - or A L Lloyd's reasonable effort to expand and bring up to date the definition in Folk Song in England', but as far as I'm concerned, the 1954 version is your starting point; ignore it and you have no case.
As we seem to be into analogies I've told Joe Heaney's story before, but it's a fair example of the double-think that seems to surround this subject.
"Once there was a Protestant who moved into a Catholic area, fell in love with a Catholic girl and wanted to marry her, but first had to ask the priest, who readily gave permission on the condition that he changed his religion.
One Friday, a week after the wedding the priest was cycling past the cottage when he caught the smell of frying bacon coming out of the window.
Knocked on the door and said, "don't you know us Catholics are forbidden to eat meat on a Friday?"
Your man replied, "Father, I can't do without meat every day - what shall I do?"
The priest replied, Each Friday you find the urge for meat coming on   
repeat to yourself "I'm a Catholic, I'm a Catholic, I'm a Catholic".
A month or so later, one Friday, the priest was going past the house again and, sure enough, the smell of frying bacon.
Furious, he jumps of his bike and storms into the house, to find your man sitting in front of a plate of bacon and cabbage saying, "You're a fish, you're a fish, you're a fish".
As I said at the beginning - flag of convenience.
The confusion surrounding what now passes for folk has been the cause of us losing many thousands of enthusiasts who were no longer prepared to sit through a 'folk' evenings without a 'folk' song being sung (such as the one a few years ago in the North of England that put on a night of Beatles songs).
The continuing 'Humpty Dumpty' attitude will probably mean that real songs will only survive between the covers of books or in sound archives - pity.
Cap'n,
Stop throwing your toys out of the pram - address the points I have made or go and talk to somebody else - I really don't have time for thas.
Jim Carroll