David W Solomons' Music Site

The singer is in fact a would-be lover but he puts on the persona of a
tinker or pedlar (ie a street trader) and shows his lady his love as
if he were selling her his wares

 Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new,
- excellent trinkets for ladies (my love is represented by these)

 Good pennyworths but money cannot move,
- they would actually cost quite a lot but I know that money
cannot buy you love (hey the Beatles pinched that one!)
 
I keep a fair but for the fair to view,

I have a stall in a market (or fair) but my goods (ie love) are
only for the beautiful (fair) to see< br />


 A beggar may be liberal of love.

I may be a beggar but I can give my love away free!

Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true.

These tinker's trinkets are rubbish but my love is loyal


 Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again,

You may get expensive gifts from richer suitors, but such
generosity only gives rise to greed

My trifles come as treasures from my mind,

accept my trinkets, they are precious and their value is purely
spiritual love

It is a precious jewel to be plain,

The jewels of others are mere tawdriness, my jewels are plain but
all the more valuable because they come from true love

 Sometimes in shell the Orient's pearls we find.

Effectively the same meaning as previous line (referring to the
roughness of the oyster's shell and the beautiful pearl within !

 Of others take a sheaf, of me a grain.

You may get riches from other suitors, but what you'll get from me
is not much materially (but lots in love)

Within this pack pins, points, laces and gloves,
 And divers toys fitting a country fair,

back to the tinker motif... (and by the way, be sure to sing the
first line staccato in this verse!)

 But in my heart, where duty serves and loves,
Turtles and twins, Court's brood, a heav'nly pair.

Now this is the most difficult couplet because I don't recall who
the courtly twins were: some people at the court of queen Elizabeth
I,  I expect, or possibly someone at court
was born under the sign of Gemini and is being referred to slyly in
the song?. Turtles are of course turtledoves, which represent love
because they coo so much!

 Happy the man that thinks of no removes.

Similar to Voltaire's "cultivons notre jardin" - let us be happy
where we are and not concern ourselves with going to, and winning
favour at, the Royal Court.


(David Kastrup comments: referring to the older pronunciation and ambiguities coming from that:


There are interchanged meanings "fair" -- "fire", "pair" -- "payer",
"for a country fair" can mean either for a market or a beauty.  One
measures grains in sheafs, but measures jewels in grains: small, but
precious.  That one's really clever.  The heavenly pair sounds to me
like, well, breasts.

The whole third stanza is about clothing for a country fair, but the
singer thinks of the heavenly pair and praises those that are so
unimpressed that they do not think of removing the clothing.
Something like that.

All in all, the song is such a mess that one can't put one's finger on
its impropriety.