At the end of the 18th century and into the 19th, there was a vogue for little books of tunes with titles like "Preston's 24 Country Dances for the Year 1793", or "Skillern's", or whoever it might be. The English Folk Dance and Song Society have digitized quite a lot.
For the last few years, with the help of print-on-demand, I have paid homage to this tradition by collecting 12 newly written tunes each year and sending them to friends. You can download them here in PDF format.
Historic dance and tune books in the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
=> https://abcnotation.com/ ABC notation
All these tunes are free for distribution under Creative Commons CC(0)
PDF of "12 tunes for the year 2021"
### Notes on the tunes Like English folk tunes in general, a lot of these tunes are just named after places. Perhaps more interesting are: _Reed's Fortune_: After an Episode wherein a Fiddle was unwontedly transported to Kensington (Olympia). The Slows are provided for the Benefit of interested Morris Sides. _Five Miles From Anywhere, No Hurry._ Epithet of a renowned Cambridgeshire Hostelry. _Wilton's_ refers to the celebrated music hall in East London. _The Lord Hood_ was the pub that hosted the Greenwich Traditional Musicians Co-operative until 2018 or thereabouts, when it was demolished to make way for flats. The session moved to a different pub in Greenwich but it never really recovered.
PDF of "12 tunes for the year 2022"
PDF of "12 tunes for the year 2023"