Pierrot Grenade is the main jester in Caribbean mas. Many of the stock characters appear elsewhere in carnival &c.

The name is a diminutive of Pierre. The original title for Haitian Oswald Durand's famous Kreyole poem was Petit Pierre; his Columbine is named Choucoune who dumps him for her ginger French colonial Harlequin.

The American circus clown comes from the same place of course. George L. Fox's (1825–1877) panto of the English Humpty-Dumpty was Broadway's first real hit show and its longest running for a decade. My boy American circus aeronaut Charles E. Colby also did Humpty-Dumpty on vaudeville. No stranger to Caribbean carnival clowning either was he.

Woody Guthrie's aw shucks, rodeo clown-hillbilly sage shtick was pure Zanni.