The Marqués de Santillana’s serranillas are generally revered as lofty poetry. However, the poetic situations they present, patterned on French pastourelles, establish a risqué expectation and offer the male narrator a platform from which to boast about his sexual exploits outside of court. The serranillas were likely written as bawdy works, aimed at providing ribald entertainment. Serranilla III has been misinterpreted as a work written merely to praise its  serrana’s great beauty, when in fact her receptive reply to the narrator and her expensive outfit indicate that she is a prostitute.