Elves and Music

[Pitchwife]

*sigh of yearning*
Thanks for the link! Makes me regret very much that I probably won't have the means and/or time to go there anywhere in the near future - but it also conjured up fond memories of Wales, which is very similar in some places. And most of the video would also have fitted very nicely into the 'I see Middle-earth'-thread.

If elves still existed and made songs, then they would live in Ireland

Actually, if we take Tolkien's word that the Shire would be roughly in the position of Oxfordshire on a map of modern Europe, that would put the Grey Havens more or less on the western coast of Ireland. So if any of the Firstborn still linger on the shores of our world, that would indeed be the most likely place for them!
Which reminds me of something else*. In many regions of Germany (and possibly other European countries as well?), we have folk tales about elves, dwarves, brownies or other faerish beings leaving the country in large numbers. The reasons given for this exodus vary - sometimes it's us humans growing too numerous and filling all the formerly quiet places, sometimes it's the spreading of Christianity and the sound of church bells which the fairies couldn't stand - , but most of the stories involve a ferryman who shipped the emigrants across a great river and was rewarded in gold or silver enchanted to appear as dirt or leaves at first sight. Quite often the river is the Rhine, meaning that the exodus was headed westwards.
So if the fairies emigrated from central/continental Europe and kept moving westwards, where would they eventually end up (short of sailing across the Great Sea)? In the British Isles and Ireland.

*(I have a sort of phantom memory of mentioning this on another thread before, but no idea where and when this could have been.)