Ghillie Dhu the Ghillie Dhu was a gentle and kind-hearted mountain spirit, or a "rather unusual nature fairy." The Ghillie Dhu was an individual male modern day fairy described by Osgood Mackenzie, a Scottish landowner and horticulturist, in his memoirs that were published in 1921. The fairy was generally timid, yet he could also be "wild". Residing in the birch woods near Loch a Druing, in the north-west Highland area of Gairloch, he was mainly seen in the latter part of the 18th century. The woods are in a dip alongside a hilly area around from where Rua Reidh Lighthouse was later
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,