The feasting people were Wood-elves, of course. ...They differed from the High Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise.

It is from the Greenwood that Gilrilion the Fair hails, though of his kin and early years he will say naught - seemingly, though, not for the sake of any tragedy or mischance that has befallen them or him; rather, because such onerous details dwell in the past and for the past there is now little regard.  Flighty and perilous, little can surely be traced of his wanderings and histories and encounters.  Many who claim to have heard his pipe sounding in the darkened forest or to have seen him leaping swift on hill's crest may well be speaking of fancies or falsehoods, and some who have met him and spoken with him may never have learnt with whom they had conversed.  In these latter days of Middle-earth, though, Gilrilion is a recollection of the Eldar in their youth, when they were fierce and free and unburdened by wisdom, and no Shadow had yet darkened their heart that did not spring from themselves.

‘But the Quendi shall be the fairest of all earthly creatures, and they shall have and shall conceive and bring forth more beauty than all my Children; and they shall have the greater bliss in this world.’

The pursuit of joy would seem the chief and only aim of this Elf.  Ever if there is merriment or congregation, he may appear, and in dancing and music king and feasting he takes the greatest delights; delights that may seem unnaturally potent to his fellow merrymakers.  Unwearying he is in his enjoyment of pleasures, and fully does he burn in his loves for them; burning so fierce that it may seem to some that any moment will he be consumed by them.  Yet he endures, and if ever it came to pass that Gilrilion the Piper sputtered and faded, no tale tells of it.

‘To sheep other sheep no doubt appear different,’ laughed Lindir. ‘Or to shepherds. But Mortals have not been our study. We have other business.’

Few are the Fair Folk who have studied the ways and knowledge of Mortals.  But if one thing can be said with any great certainty of this strange and excitable creature, it is that oft it may seem that he shuns his own kind and folk, favouring rather the company of other peoples.  It is with Men and Hobbits and even Dwarves that Swiftfoot Gilrilion takes joy in merrymaking, a joy that may seem (especially to those who chance upon him a second time) almost perverse and wicked, as if all the world were a joke to Gilrilion.  For foolish and flighty though he may seem, there is an understanding behind those piercing eyes of mortals and their small ways, an understanding that few of his kin share.  And ever when he laughs and makes merry at feast, one may wonder if Gilrilion laughs with his fellows, or rather at them.

But if there is an answer to this question, he has not yet told it.

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