Moss-trooper
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Moss-troopers were bandits that operated in Scotland during and after the time of the English Commonwealth. The moss-troopers were often disbanded or deserting soldiers from one of the Scottish armies of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The moss-troopers were men who kept their weapons and lived a life of banditry, attacking both civilians and Parliamentary soldiers for supplies - Scotland was occupied by the English Parliamentarians under George Monck. The moss-troopers usually operated in small bands either on the fringes of the Highlands or in the border regions. Many of the Highland lairds complained of the moss-troopers' stealing their cattle and bringing military reprisals on the Highlands as a whole. Some of the moss-troopers may have had a political as well as economic motivation - feeling that they were resisting the Cromwellian occupation of Scotland, as their co-oppressed in Ireland. Their contemporaries there were known either as a "Wood Kerne", or "an tóraí" .
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