[jQuery] cluetip doesn't work with IE for me

[dgm]

I'm trying to use cluetip (Looks great!) to display a full text of
otherwise truncated data, in a table.  (Email subjects are truncated
for the normal view, but if you mouse over, I want a tooltip to show
the full subject).  I'm using php and smarty templates to generate the
table rows:

<td align="left">
<a id="link_{$row[hamloop].id}" class="thickbox tip"
rel=".tip{$row[hamloop].id}"
href="view.php{$msid}mail_id={$row[hamloop].id}&amp;cache_type={$cache_type}&amp;address_id={$row[hamloop].address_id}">
{$row[hamloop].subject|truncate:$truncate_subject:"...":true|
escape:'htmlall'}
</a>
<span class="tip{$row[hamloop].id}">{$row[hamloop].subject|
escape:"javascript"|escape:'htmlall'}</span>
</td>

and then at the bottom of the file, I do:

$('a.tip').cluetip({local:true, cursor: 'pointer'});

This works great on Firefox 3, but IE 6 and 7 just give a blank
screen, or a bonk dialog that says the operation was aborted.  No
other info. :(

If I take out the cluetip call, it loads ok.

Example output  from the code above:

<td align="left">
<a id="link_12345" class="thickbox tip" rel=".tip12345" href="view.php?
mail_id=12345&amp;cache_type=spam&amp;address_id=10">
A really long subject line...
</a>
<span class="tip12345">A really long subject line was truncated</span>
</td>

As I understand the docs, the <a rel=".tip12345" ... means it will put
the <span class="tip12345" text into he tooltip.  This is repeated
many times with different id's, so there is still a one to one mapping
of rel's to spans.

Any ideas as to what is going on?