I want to open today with a story from Scotland about the gilly do, a gentle fairy from

Scottish folklore. He's a kindly solitary spirit, right, nice guy, said to live in the birch

forests of the Scottish Highlands. I won't tell the whole story, but short version, girl gets lost,

runs into the gilly do, the gilly do protects her all night and

then helps her get home the next morning. And afterwards, some local guys try to shoot him. Talk about

gratitude, right? But they can't. because they can't see him.

The gilly do is hard to see from the trees, for he wears clothes of moss and leaves.

Now let's talk about what the gilly do is thought to be an eponym for.

The gilly suit, an outfit often worn by less than gentle humans. Hunters and soldiers create gilly suits out of leaves and shrubbery,

covering their whole body in an attempt to make themselves invisible

to threats and would-be victims.

This outfit was quite appropriately invented by the Scottish, who named it for their own

moss-covered fairy, and still, even today, it is the closest thing to an invisibility cloak

we humans have. You wouldn't think that just covering yourselves head to toe and leaves and moss and

things like that would actually be a very effective form of camouflage, but it's ridiculously powerful.

I knew someone with a gilly suit when I was a kid, wasn't even a good one,

and it was nonetheless like he was invisible as soon as he stepped into the bushes whilst wearing it.

If you're wearing a gilly suit, you can basically disappear by lying down in the grass.

Its simple design, the mere covering of oneself, head to toe with components of the natural

environment, belies its recent invention.

It was first used by Scottish snipers who invented this method of camouflage only about a century

ago.

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