I think there's a bit more to the trad. repertoire than simply being "historic songs", but it's fairly debatable.

I like this Historic Songs tag, makes a lot of sense to me. If such things aren't happening now it's not for the want of folk music, rather a shift in the means by which music is created and consumed. Music is still created and consumed; the creative processes still exist, just the methods and results are a little different in terms of permanence. However, it seems more likely that these Historic Songs & Ballads are the result of a Tradition of Songwriting, Craftmanship & Creation rather than a theoretical Folk Process, which is to say the Traditional / Historic Songs are not born of collective / anonymous transformation but of very definite and purposeful mastery of a craft. As with song-smiths & ballad-mongers, then so with joiners, woodcarvers, coopers, blacksmiths etc. These were all creative individuals working within a tradition of master-craftsmanship. I agree that no-one could write one of these songs today any more than we could build a medieval church or cathedral; that articular tradition is long dead which is why these Historical Songs are so valuable. Even so, when I sing (say) Butter and Cheese and All I feel the same sense of craftsman ship as I do when examining the idiosyncratically mischievous carvings on a medieval misericord. That idiosyncrasy is an individual creative genius at work within a collective tradition.   

Really, what's so intolerable about the idea that I'm describing something that people (mostly) don't do any more? Society changes, and people's lives change with it.

The same collective urge that empowers the musical experience of every day folk is as alive and well in 2009 as it ever has been. This urge needs no revival, it's there by way of human social necessity by which we must celebrate in terms of festival, ceremony, ritual, courtship, or whatever. Music will always be part of that - and this is the musical experience of the people, the Folk, and is, therefore, Folk Music. What is intolerable is the situation whereby the Historic Songs that were rejected by the actual folk are said to be the only real Folk Music because of some hoary old nebulous shibboleth written by a cranky old nannying antiquarian folklorist over fifty years ago.      

As for "Moon in June", there's nothing 'folk' about a musician writing a song and then changing it! The folk process is all about music being carried by a community and changed as it goes - it's a collective process of listening and imitating and remembering and singing and listening.

As touched upon above, in concentrating on the communal Folklorists and Song Collectors are prone to over look the creative role of the individual writers and singers. In this sense The Folk are the faceless collective proletarian masses there to do the cultural bidding of the intelligentsia. As I've pointed out, however, all musical creativity - even the Folk Process - is determined by the creativity of individuals. The Moon in June is a pretty obvious example of this, as far as any one person is an individual in the sense of their own community and the traditions thereof. In Robert Wyatt's case it came about within the community that was the Soft Machine, resulting in the still-painful (to him) reality that the other members were keen to get rid of their pop-group past and refused to play on it, which meant he had to do all the instrumental parts himself. This is the version that appears on Third, which is all Wyatt except the 6/8 instrumental theme & organ solo which was recorded separately with Hopper & Ratledge. However, Hugh Hopper maintained that this wasn't the case at all, rather that it was Wyatt's preferred way of recording the song after the original demo from 1968. Whatever the case, all three members contribute to the 1969 BBC session version and one might watch a live 1969 trio version, recorded 2 months previously, HERE in which Wyatt changes the song so much it almost becomes an instrumental! In this sense the song is carried by a community & evolved therein, likewise most rock & pop songs, prog, jazz, etc.