If Offer Them To These Waters

The Celtic religious sense was strongly marked by the principle of reciprocity. To save a life, another would be sacrificed. Similarly, if sacred waters were used by someone expecting a cure, a gift in exchange was expected of the user.

To a warlike people like the Celts, the rituals associated with victory were of great significance--a victory had to be paid for with the spoils of was. It was for this reason that great quanities of arms were thrown into lakes and rivers: Indeed virtually all the fine metalwork associated with warfare found in Breitain has been recovered from under water ...

... A remarkable collection of metalwork was found in a bog at Lynn Cerrig Bach in Anglesley in 1943. The colllection--composed of swords, spears, shields, chariot and harness fittings, ironworkers’ tools, trumpets, cauldrons, and a slave chain--had been trhown from a projecting rock into a pool from some time in the first century AD.

(Cunliffe remarks about items retrieved from a votive spring off the Seine in France, devoted to Sequanna, a Celtic deity)

Of particular interest are the wooden votives, found in 1963, in waterlogged deposits. Most of them were simply carved from the heart wood of oak to represent all or part of the human form. Twenty-seven complete human figures were recovered, mostly wearing cloaks, but the collection also included heads, limbs (usually legs but occasionally arms and hands), and trunks. Even more interest attaches to group of 22 wooden placques carved in relief to represent internal organs, one of which is an anatomically accurate depiction of the trachea and lungs. Other remarkable items include a collection of bronze and stone votives illustrating eyes, sex organs, and breasts, as well as heads, hands, and feet.

— Barry Cunliffe, The Celtic World