When I and my siblings were young kids and living in a rural island town our mother would forbid us from going out at night for fear that we might get sick because of the "sereno." Up to now I do not exactly know what this "sereno" she was fearful of was, but my vague idea then was it had something to do with the cold air from the sky descending upon one's uncovered head and making him sick.
In this Spanish novel written in 1874 ("El Sombrero de Tres Picos") I learned that a "sereno" was a night watchman who would patrol the streets of Spanish town during those days and make announcements every hour on the state of the weather.
As the Philippines was under Spain for about three hundred years a lot of the Spanish language crept into its own. I can only imagine that during the times of my great, great grandparents there had been real "serenos" in our town, roaming during the night, announcing the weather, and perhaps during bad days warning people (especially young children) against going out else they might get a cold or something. Somehow maybe people then associated "serenos" with ailments caught during nighttime romps outside, until it became that mysterious evil thing getting children sick when they go out at night which my mother's generation understood it to be.
I never saw any "sereno," but when I was a young boy I'd seen and heard "bandos"--the town crier--announcing important news in every street corner. That was the time before our town had electricity a long time ago.
When this novel was published for the first time 139 years ago the Philippines was still under Spanish rule. One interesting detail which caught my eye, in fact, was one female character here cooling herself "majestically with a very large fan brought from the Philippines." She was the Corregidor's wife.
Now ask any Filipino today what "corregidor" is and he'll say it's an island at the Manila Bay where the combined Filipino-American forces made their last stand against the Japanese during world war two. The introduction to this novel, however, explains that a "corregidor" was then an important local Spanish official, close to the position of a Mayor or a local town magistrate.
The plot revolves around a Corregidor lusting after the young wife of a miller. A bawdy tale, supposed to have made Spanish maidens giggle during those time, but which I find lame, lame, lame by today's standards.