Was it perhaps for "tea" that Honore ny Brien, wife of the Lord of Lixnaw, invited Maurice Stack after dinner to her chamber in her husband's castle of Beaulieu in Kerry? Pacata Hibernia, a history of the wars in Ireland during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the first, informs: "Dinner being ended, the young lady desired to speak with the said Stack privately in her chamber, where after a little time spent, and disagreeing about the matter then in speech, the lady cried out unto Dermond Rewghe Mac Cormac, William O'Donichan, and Edmond O'Heher (being at the chamber door): `Do you not hear him misuse me in words?'
"Whereupon with their skeans they instantly murdered him in the place." the Lord of Lixnaw, not sated with that blood-letting, did the following day hang Thomas Encally Stack, the brother of the said Maurice, whom he had held prisoner a long time before. Elsewhere Pacata Hibernia refers to Garret Roe Stack as the brother of the Lord of Lixnaw, and the editor, Standish O'Grady, in a footnote noted that "the Stackes, though an Undertaking family, showed at least a tendency to become Irish". Was this the same Maurice Stacke, a servant of the lord president, who is described as "a man of small stature, but of invincible courage" in his master's service?
Whatever about the Stacks being an Undertaking family, Mac Lysaght in The Surnames of Ireland says that this English surname is in Ireland since the beginning of the 14th century, which by the 16th had become thoroughly Irish, being among the foremost Kerry opponents of the English in the Elizabethan wars. Indeed the name is listed 90 times in the Irish Fiants of the Tudor Sovereigns (1522-1603), being almost exclusively pardons during Elizabeth's reign. The majority were located in north Co Kerry: Balliloghan, Listowel, Kilflynn, Aghenecraine, Killurie, etc. This latter names a parish, now spelt Killury. The first element here might be cill (a church) or coill (a wood), and the second element has a number of possibilities. The Stacks Mountains likes between Tralee and Abbeyfeale, and a district nearby is named Pobble Stack (Pobail Staic), Stack's Country.
The above Stacks bore a range of personal nick-names: oge (og, young); gancagh (geanncach, snub-nosed); duffe (dubh, black); garve (garbh, rough); na manstragh (na Mainistreach, of the monastery); beg (beag, small); kiaghe (caoch, blind); negan; achalla; encally; aghgcallowe; na briocke, and totan.
The census of 1659 numbered the Stacks among the principal Irish names in the north Kerry baronies of Clanmaurice and Iraghticonnor. Two of the names were among tituladoes in the Co Clare parishes of Kilfearagh and Moyarta.
Surprisingly, the largest Stack holding listed in Owners of Land of One Acre and Upwards (1876) is the 3,134 acres at Mullaghmore, Omagh, Co Tyrone, with another at Omagh of 437 acres. There was 151 acres in Co Fermanagh; 294 in Co Clare, and four holdings in Co Kerry, the largest being the 1,205 acres of the late Major-General N.M. Stack, Lake Caragh, Killarney.
This surname may derive from "pile, heap, isolated column of rock, haystack", but "haystacker" or "hefty as a haystack", are more likely. The Surnames of Ireland gives Stac as the Irish for this name, and de Bhulbh's Sloinnte na hEireann/Irish Surnames gives Staic. However the three in the telephone directory are de Stac. There are 453 Stack entries, of which 243 are in the 06 area.
A headstone in Killury graveyard commemorates William Fenix who died in 1903, "who kept the green flag to the front for over thirty years and actually died in harness in the endeavour to right the wrongs of his country". Bill Fenix was a shoemaker, and with the O'Dee brothers and Harry (Macanta) O'Connor, was involved in the Land League. He spent some time in jail in England and died at the age of fifty. Locally pronounced "faynix", this name has three telephone entries in Tralee and one in Dublin, with nine with the more conventional spelling of Phoenix, largely found in Dublin. Phoenix is listed five times in the phone book of Northern Ireland. Only de Bhulbh lists Phoenix - but not Fenix - but ventures no explanation, or time of arrival in Ireland.