Good heavens, Jo--look what I found, going link to link in your site. I read the Halloween Wedding story, and got curious about the author, Kathryn A. Laity. She's a prof. of medieval studies at the U. of Connecticut, and look what she did her dissertation on:
Local Heroes: The Sociolinguistic Context for the Development of Vernacular Saints' Lives in Old Irish, Old Norse and Old English.

This dissertation investigates the particular case of the vernacular lives of three native saints, Brigit, Óláf and Guþlac, within the context of the heroic and literary traditions of Ireland, Scandinavia and England during the Middle Ages. It scrutinizes where these portrayals lie on a continuum between the competing traditions that affect their formulation: the widely-disseminated, influential Latin vitae and the popular epics of the vernacular literary heroes and mythical figures. It focuses on these particular saints' lives because they embody the different tensions—and the creative resolutions—between these competing traditions in very different ways: Brigit as the reformulation of a pagan deity; Óláf as the land-hungry Viking king; and Guþlac as the quintessential Anglo-Saxon warrior.