The tongue is assigned of wordes to be sorter;
The mouth is assigned to be the tongue’s dorter;
The teeth are assigned to be the tongue’s porter;
But wisdom is ’signed to tye the tongue shorter.
The figure is somewhat forced, but it has its beauty. The ‘Fermerer,’ now found as ‘Fermor’ and ‘Firmer,’ was he who superintended the infirmary. Only a few lines further on, in the earlier of the two poems from which I last quoted, we find Chaucer making mention of—
Our sexton, and our fermerere,
That have been trewe freres fifty year.
The ‘Tale of a Monk,’ too, begins—
A black munk of an abbaye
Was enfermer of alle I herd say—