Ghillie Dhu Ghillie Dhu In Scottish folklore the Ghillie Dhu or Gille Dubh () was a solitary male fairy. He was kindly and reticent yet sometimes wild in character but had a gentle devotion to children. Dark haired and clothed in leaves and moss, he lived in a birch wood within the Gairloch and Loch a Druing area of the north-west highlands of Scotland. "Ghillie" is an English equivalent of the Scottish Gaelic word ; Edward Dwelly, a Scottish lexicographer, lists "gille" as a "lad", "youth" or "boy" with "dubh" translating as "dark" or "dark-haired". According to folklorist and scholar Katharine Briggs
Gillie century, from the Scottish Gaelic "gille", "lad, servant", cognate with the Irish "giolla". Historically, the term was used for a Highland chief's attendant. A ghillie-weetfit, a term now obsolete (a translation of "gille-caisfliuch", from the Gaelic "cos" foot/leg and "fliuch" wet), was the ghillie whose duty it was to carry his master over streams. It became a term of contempt among the Lowlanders for the "tail" (as his attendants were called) of a Highland chief. Gillie Gillie or ghillie is a Gaelic term for a man or a boy who acts as an attendant on a fishing, fly fishing, hunting,