TEA AND TAY.
From Blackwood's last "Noctes."
North. As you love me, my dear James, call it not tea, but tay. That though obsolete, is the classical pronunciation. Thus Pope sings in the Rape of the Lock, canto i.
"Soft yielding minds to water glide away,
And sip with nymphs their elemental tea."
And also in canto iii—
"Where thou great Anna, whom these realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea."
And finally in the Basset Table—
"Tell, tell your grief, attentive will I stay,
Though time is precious, and I want some tea."
Shepherd. A body might think frae thae rhymes, that Pop had been an Eerishman.