'Astromye' in 'The Miller's Tale'

Description: Twice the carpenter in MilT uses "astromye": is it a malapropism, an acceptable variant, or a scribal error? Since according to Manly-Rickert all mss of CT record "astromye," the last of these is not tenable. And since the word thus misused does not take on the form of another word,it cannot be a malapropism, though the evidence we have for these matters come 200 years after Chaucer wrote. It must therefore be considered an allowable variant without any connotation of barbarism or illiteracy.