I was wondering why the expression in UK’s national anthem God Save the Queen is “Send her victorious happy and glorious” and not “Send her victory Happiness and glory”.
I am not a native English speaker, so I might be overlooking grammar a bit.
Could someone help me with this?
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1Compare the old adage (perhaps from the world of entertainment) 'Send them home happy'. 'Victorious', 'happy' and 'glorious' are words describing the (requested state of the) monarch. I'd not like to judge whether this is a causative or depictive usage, though. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 15 '22 at 13:54
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2Scansion/fitting the tune also played a part: it appears to have been an older tune - see Wikipedia. The existing version has a much stronger rhythm than your suggestion. – Stuart F Apr 15 '22 at 14:49
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Does this answer your question? In ‘catch me off guard’, is the ‘off guard’ an objective complement or adjective phrase? (depictive constructions) – Edwin Ashworth Apr 16 '22 at 11:58
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As is often the case in songs,* the perceived grammatical lack comes because the clause isn't done yet. It continues:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us
From a modern perspective, the full phrase simplifies to "Send her to reign." "Happy and glorious" do not modify "victory/victorious"; rather, it's a series of three adjectives modifying "her."
Note, Wikipedia mentions OED examples of "God send [a person] [adjective]" to mean "God grant that the person be [adjective]," so an earlier perspective may not have required anything more than "Send her victorious, happy, and glorious."
* Consider the Christmas song "Silent night." Multiple factors encourage us to perceive a full stop after "All is calm, all is bright": the conclusion of a musical metric phrase, a harmonic cadence, the conclusion of a rhyming couplet. This would however orphan the rest of the verse ("Round yon virgin...") as a sentence fragment. The intended meaning is in fact "Around yon[der] virgin mother et al., all is calm and bright."
Andy Bonner
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I suppose nowadays her in "Send her victorious" is the direct object (she is sent into the future) rather than the indirect object (glory is sent to her). – Andrew Leach Apr 16 '22 at 08:41
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@AndrewLeach It's bugging the heck out of me; there's some song that was on the tip of my tongue that exemplifies this phenomenon to an exaggerated degree: something about the meter or musical setting strongly encourages hearers to break up a sentence, to the point that I've heard people insert an extra word to make sense of the remaining sentence fragment. I've edited in "Silent Night" as an example, but there's a stronger one out there... – Andy Bonner Apr 16 '22 at 13:54
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Perhaps a question of rhyme ...
victorious and glorious rhyme, both accented on the o.
victory and glory do not rhyme, since victory is accented on the i.
GEdgar
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