Cateran

Okay, so imagine you are playing a game of hide and seek with your friends. One friend is "it," and they have to try and find all of the other friends who are hiding. But in this game, some of the friends are allowed to peek out and see where "it" is hiding.

That's kind of like what a cateran is. In the olden days in Scotland, there were groups of people called caterans who were kind of like bandits. They would hide out in the mountains and forests, and when someone was travelling through their territory, the caterans would come out and steal things from them.

But the caterans weren't just stealing from anyone. They would often "peek out" and watch who was travelling through their territory, so they could target people they knew had valuable things with them. And just like with the "it" in your game of hide and seek, the people travelling through cateran territory would never know exactly where the caterans were hiding, so they had to be very careful.

So, yeah. Caterans were basically like sneaky bandits who would steal things from people travelling through their territory, and they were really good at hiding so people couldn't catch them.