Thanks for all that. What we don't know is whether Tolkien was a rejecting the idea of the communication or whether he simply came up with a better idea for the tales that Trotter would tell. Talking to animals, as he say in 'On Faerie Stories' is one of those qualities that we all seem to enjoy. I wonder if he thought it was a little too extreme a thing to include directly so left in just this rather vague mention of the idea. When I'm not late for work, I might come back on this. There's also the question of whether or not Elves could really talk to trees that we were also discussing [and deciding they couldn't!]