This week I’ve got an old English morris dance tune called the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance. This is one of my favorite “early music” tunes (i.e. pre-Baroque), and dates to roughly the 11th century.

The Horn dance was a unique dance found in the Staffordshire area, utilising reindeer antlers. Reindeer have been extinct in England since before the 11th century, which the current set of antlers carbon dated to, and because of this, there is speculation the dance may be significantly older than 11th century. There is speculation that the dance was performed as a ritual to ensure good hunting during the year, and/or was connected to customs of one of the ruling families in the area (who incidentally owned a large part of the local forest and hunting areas).

I found the music at Kitchen Musician: http://kitchenmusician.net/
And other resources:
http://www.abbotsbromley.com/horn_dance
http://tibetanmaterialhistory.wikischolars.columbia.edu/Deer+in+Bon