Folk music, in the most basic sense of the term, is music by and for the common people. Various sites provide with old and traditional English folk songs for free download in mp3, wma, real and many other formats. The lyrics and videos of these songs are also available and they can be seen or heard online as well. Folk music from the southern Appalachians is widely recognized.
Folk songs are commonly seen as songs that express something about a way of life that exists now or in the past or is about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived). There is a lot of English folk music, and much of that comes from the northern edge of England, particularly the area of Northumbria on the border of Scotland. There was a vogue for folk music during the start of the Romantic period. One of the first to use it was Josef Haydn. Beethoven made arrangements of Irish, Welsh and Scottish folk songs. Ralph Vaughan Williams made choral arrangement of English folk songs. The Ballads and Blues Club which eventually became renamed the Singers' Club was possibly the first of what became known as folk clubs. The rise of folk music as a popular genre began with performers whose own lives were rooted in the authentic folk tradition. Thus, for example, Woody Guthrie began by singing songs he remembered his mother singing to him as a child. Later, in the 1930s and 1940s, Guthrie collected folk music and also composed his own songs, as did Pete Seeger. In the 1960s such singers as Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Bob Dylan followed in Guthrie's footsteps and to begin writing "protest music" and topical songs, particularly against the Vietnam War, and likewise expressed in song their support for the American Civil Rights Movement. Since the 1970s a genre of "contemporary folk", fueled by new singer-songwriters, has continued to make the coffee-house circuit and keep the tradition of acoustic non-classical music alive in the United States. Such artists include Dawn Xiana Moon, Chris Castle, Steve Goodman, John Prine, Cheryl Wheeler, Bill Morrissey, and Christine Lavin. Fom Ireland The Pogues and The Corrs brought traditional tunes back into the album charts.
Neofolk music is a modern form of music that began in the 1980s. Fusing traditional European folk music with post-industrial music forms, historical topics, philosophical commentary, traditional songs and paganism, the genre is largely European. Although it is not uncommon for neofolk artists to be entirely acoustic, playing with entirely traditional instruments.

A list of my favorite english folk songs is :

• She Belongs to Me by Bob Dylan
• All I Really Want to Do by Bob Dylan
• I Never Really Loved You Anyway by the Corrs
• Runaway by The Corrs..