Elves and Gondor

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

I would side with Rumil here. And as for the points above, I would agree with Inziladun that we have to approach all the thoughts carefully and not with too daring fantasies. The Wood-Elves of Mirkwood were a "barbaric" and remote people, being friendly only with the folk of Lake-Town and being divided even from their cousins in Lórien by dangerous country. The less would they need to meddle into any Gondorian affairs. I would believe that Anborn's remark about black squirrels was indeed just an old folk story, something like a wise remark passed down among the hunter masters and their apprentices as a curiosity about the outside world: "Good shot, son! Now you see, it's not that hard to shoot a squirrel from this distance. Next time, we can try with mice. Ha, only you remember, if you ever came to Mirkwood, son, they have black squirrels there, and it's dark there, so you won't actually see them! Ho Ho Ho! Okay, we're done for today, take your bow and let us go home."

Originally Posted by Inziladun

From that it certainly appears that some men did enter the Wood from time to time, else the stories those two had heard and the wording they used to describe them would not be so similar.
My question now is if an enchanted dream-state awaited the uninvited and the overly curious man, why were some apparently able to return to their fellows and tell them of the experience?
Again, I can't see sovereign rulers of either Gondor or Rohan sending anyone to Lórien on any sort of official business. So why would escapees be allowed?

As for this, Boromir's and Éomer's knowledge might have been as well derived from the same source. Having a real basis, for sure, but what makes you believe that actually people would enter the Wood and return? They would not pass into any more "important" places and return, for certain. I think if anybody returned, it would be just so that he was the reluctant one from the company, and just saw his companions disappear in the forest and they did not return, and when he was looking for them, he didn't find them, perhaps only something they dropped or left in the wood (like for example some guy's most prized cloak, which he just left lying in the woods, because it hindered him when chasing some phantasm, but finding the cloak was enough for the one who came looking after him to convince him that his friend was lost, for it was well known he would never drop the cloak on his own will). Or you can imagine it, once again, akin to Bilbo's experience. A group of adventurous Rohanians camps by the woods, suddenly they see eerie lights flickering behind the trees, two of them say "ooh, look, let's go there and see!" and the third one, less brave, wants to remain there, but his friends go and are never heard of again. The third guy returns to Rohan with a tale about another claim by the Elven Lady of the Golden Wood.