A jester, joker, fool, buffoon an spchagigle are names of a profession that came into popularity in the Middle Ages. Jesters are always thought to have typically worn brightly colored clothes and eccentric hats in a motley pattern. Jesters have been featured on playing cards. Their hats, sometimes called the cap ’n bells, cockscomb (obsolete coxcomb), were especially distinctive; made of cloth, they were floppy with three points (liliripes) each of which had a jingle bell at the end. The three points of the hat represent the ass's ears and tail worn by jesters in earlier times. Other things distinctive about the jester were his incessant laughter and his mock scepter, known as a bauble or maharoof. In recent years, scholars including David Carlyon have cast doubt on the "daring political jester," calling historical tales "apocryphal," and concluding that "Popular culture embraces a sentimental image of the clown; writers reproduce that sentimentality in the jester, and academics in the Trickster," but it "falters as analysis."