19 MARCH 1994, Page 29

Tay for two

Sir: No problem with Mary Ellen Synon's assertion that Dublin speech conserves many features of 17th-century English (`David Dimbleby gets it backwards', 5 March), but surely when she mentions Dry- den in connection with 'tea' being pro- nounced as `tay', she is thinking of Pope's famous lines form The Rape of the Lock:

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take — and some- times tea

John Whitton

Box 7, Ave des Eperviers 5, 1150 Brussels, Belgium