160 SACRED LAKES. 



beautiful bracelets, etc., may have been offerings to the 

 gods. In fact, it appears from ancient writers that among 

 the Gauls, Germans, and other nations, many lakes were 

 regarded as sacred. M. Aymard (Etude Archaeol. sur le Lac 

 du Bouchet. Le Puy. 1862) has collected several instances of 

 this kind. According to Cicero,* Justin, f and Strabo, J there 

 was a lake near Toulouse in which the neighbouring tribes 

 used to deposit offerings of gold and silver. Tacitus, Pliny, 

 and Virgil also mention the existence of sacred lakes. Again, 

 so late as the sixth century, Gregory of Tours, who is quoted 

 by M. Troy on and M. Aymard, tells us (De glor. confes. 

 chap, ii.) that on mount Helanus there was a lake which was 

 the object of popular worship. Every year the inhabitants 

 of the neighbourhood brought to it offerings of clothes, skins, 

 cheeses, cakes, etc. Traces of a similar superstition may still 

 be found lingering in the remote parts of Scotland and Ire- 

 land; in the former country I have myself seen a sacred 

 spring surrounded by the offerings of the neighbouring pea- 

 santry, who seemed to consider pence and halfpence as the 

 most appropriate and agreeable sacrifice to the spirit of the 

 waters. This hypothesis would account for the newness 

 of the objects, few indeed, according to Professor Desor, 

 scarcely any of which present traces of having been used. 

 Neither the coarse broken pottery, the castaway fragments of 

 bones, nor the traces of habitations, can, however, be ac- 

 counted for in this manner. 



The pottery of the Bronze period is more varied and more 

 skilfully made than that of the Stone age, but the potter's wheel 

 does not seem, to have been in use. Rings of earthenware 

 are common, and appear to have been used as supports for 

 the round-bottomed vases. The ornaments are, according to 

 M. Troy on, of the same character as those on the objects of 



* De Nat. Deor. lib. iii. xxx. f Just, xxxii. iii. J Geog. vol. iv. 



See also Wylie " On Lake-dwellings of the Early periods." Archaeol. vol. 

 xxxviii., p. 181. 



