[f. BOG sb. + TROTTER.]
† 1. One accustomed to make his way across bogs, or to run to bogs for refuge. Obs.
1700. Rycaut, Hist. Turks, III. 276. Being very nimble and active, and a kind of Bog-trotter, Achmet escaped over a Marsh.
1755. Johnson, Bog-trotter, one that lives in a boggy country.
2. spec. Applied to the wild Irish in the 17th c.; continued in the 18th c. as a nickname for Irishmen.
1682. Philanax Misopappas, Tory Plot, II. 18. An idle flam of shabby Irish Bogtrotters.
a. 1733. North, Lives, I. 406. His friends were termed Bog trotters, wild Irish, or, which means the same thing, Tories.
1753. Smollett, Ct. Fathom (1784), 80/1. A beggarly Scot, and an impudent Irish bog-trotter.
1773. Johnson, Lett., 79, I. 132. Moss in Scotland is bog in Ireland, and moss-trooper is bog-trotter.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., IV. 712. Two Irishmen, or, in the phrase of the newspapers of that day, bogtrotters.
