An Triail

An Triail
Poster for 2016 Fibín production
Written by	Máiréad Ní Ghráda
Characters	Máire Ní Chathasaigh Bean Uí Chathasaigh Pádraig Mac Carthaigh Mailí Nábla Dailí Pailí Áine ní Bhreasail Seáinín an Mhótair Liam Ó Cathasaigh Seán Ó Cathasaigh Colm Ó Sé Bean Uí Chinsealigh Factory manager Priest 2 Attorneys Landlady
Date premiered	September 22, 1964 (1964-09-22)
Place premiered	The Damer Theatre, Dublin
Original language	Irish
Subject	Prostitution, hypocrisy, Single motherhood, Magdalene asylums
Genre	Expressionism, social realism, melodrama
Setting	Rural Ireland and Dublin, 1960s

An Triail ([ən̪ˠ ˈtʲɾʲiəlʲ], "The Trial") is a play written by the Irish playwright Máiréad Ní Ghráda which starred well-known poet and Sean-nós singer Caitlín Maude in its first performance in 1964. The play was first broadcast on RTÉ radio in 1965.

The play is written entirely in the Irish language and has been on the curriculum for the Leaving Certificate examinations since 2006.

The play is set in Ireland during the 1960s and deals with the pregnancy, and subsequent single motherhood, of a young woman, Máire. She is shunned by her family after becoming impregnated by the local primary school teacher Pádraig, a married man, and must leave her parish and move to Dublin to find work to support herself and her child. Here she is once again marginalised, first for being a single pregnant woman and then for being single mother. After her accommodation collapses around her child, she moves into a brothel with a prostitute who took pity on her. An encounter with the child's father, where he further rejects her and his child, only serves to make matters worse and the girl takes her own life in a similar way to poet Sylvia Plath, as well as that of her child, by natural gas inhalation from her oven.

It often goes back and forth between "flashbacks" (memories of Máire, the protagonist) and the trial. At the beginning, Máire's mother is introduced, and proceeds to state she is a god-fearing woman who has done nothing wrong. Throughout the play, this is typical of most characters.

Máire She is the protagonist of the play. Her key flaw is her loyalty. She is very sheltered and naive due to her upbringing. As a young woman she falls in love with Pádraig, a school teacher, at a dance. Máire was raised with no knowledge of men and the like, as her mother raised her to be only a nun. She was only allowed to enter dances due to the priest being there. During the play, Máire's love for Pádraig never falters. Proof of this is seen how, even after his betrayal throughout the flashbacks, she never breaks her promises to "Never to mention [his] name", "Never to write to" him and to "Never tell anyone about" their relationship. When she becomes pregnant, she is thrown out by her mother, and goes to Dublin, where she meets Mailí, a prostitute, who shows her kindness by telling her of the Social Worker's plans to give her baby up for adoption. Máire rejects this plan, and after an accident that caused her house to collapse around her baby while she was at work, Mailí takes her in before she meets with Pádraig. She kills herself and her baby after this meeting, because Pádraig rejects her and anything to do with the child, showing her selfishness and folly. Throughout the flashbacks in which she and Pádraig meet, she is constantly told that he loves her, and would marry her, were he not married. Hence, when she finds out from a friend, a year later, that his wife died a month after she was thrown out, Máire has an emotional breakdown, and in finding out that he has remarried since, commits the fatal act in the penultimate scene.