Freebies — Macalla font
Macalla, meaning Echo, is a revival of Gaelic orthography of the 1800s. It is based on the type used in Transactions of the Ossianic Society, 1858. That unidentified typeface shows marked similarities to Watts in particular (1818) and an American redrawing for the Irish Echo (1881). There are some differences though, particularly in the lowercase “d” and “e”.
As well as Watts and the Irish Echo, similar historical fonts were created by Barlow, Christie, Fry and Figgins (Dermot McGuinne, Irish Type Design 1992). They are characterised by unusual uppercase A and M glyphs, which are almost blackletter in appearance. The typeface uses the traditional forms of a, g, r, s & t, some of which are unusual to modern eyes. The r and s in particular, along with the tironean ampersand are particular to Gaelic orthography.
The 18 letters of the Gaelic alphabet have been extended to the Latin 26. As a consequence of this, the original i (which had a descender) has been truncated to the baseline so as not to be confused with j, which does not exist in Irish. Macalla is available in just a single weight, with no italic, as per the original. There was no reference for the numerals in the old texts, therefore these have been extrapolated from the existing letterforms.
23/12/2020 Note: Macalla has been updated to 1.001. This update adds grave accents for Scottish Gàidhlig support.