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Years later, some anonymous writer, carried away by his imagination, wrote Rudel’s fictionalized biography. This style was called vida and was quite popular in the medieval period. This vida became the basis for a legend. According to it Rudel fell in love with Countess Hodierna of Tripoli without even seeing her! He just heard about her beauty from pilgrims, who were returning from the Holy Land. Rudell was so smitten, that he took a long sea journey just to see Hodierna. Unfortunately, during the voyage, he fell sick and was brought ashore in Tripoli already a dying man. When Hodierna heard the news, she came down to the shore from her castle and Rudel died in her arms.

The whole legend was a fluke, and, naturally, it never happened. But it was romantic! When 19 century Romanticism authors discovered the legend, they just could not pass the opportunity and meet it the halfway. To mention a few, Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Ludwig Uhland, Heinrich Heine, Giosué Carducci created their poems based on this fiction story. In the next century more epic poems and even an opera were created as well.

Usually, they say that life is more interesting than fiction. This time it was the other way around.

Captain Kidd did bury a small cache of treasure on Gardiner’s Island in the future state of New York. However, it was removed by authorities and sent to England to be used as evidence against him. I found this story in archives of web analytics company. This simple legend inspired several great writers, including Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving and Robert Louis Stevenson to create books of fiction. The most famous work, of course, is known all over the world as Treasure Island.

As time went by the legend did not vanish, but rather expanded. Several other places all over the world were named as possible locations of Captain Kidd’s buried treasure. For example, a new version sprang about Kidd attacking one of the Japanese islands of the Tokara archipelago. It is the most southern island named Takarajima. The legend says that all the pirates demanded food from the inhabitants. Their offer was refused, so a crew of pirates landed and killed all the inhabitants. On that very island Kidd has hidden his treasure in one of the caves. And he never came back due to his death on the gallows in England.