Wilson himself wrote the tales for the first 49 editions, it was very much a personal publishing endeavour. The final tale was however The Minister's Daughter, which looks to be a novel chopped into 9 parts to fill the last 3 editions, no doubt during a period of illness prior to his death.

Readers were encouraged to continue buying the tales after his death to support his widow. They were told there were “tales as yet untold”. In reality, the family and his printers, John Sutherland in Edinburgh, where his brother John worked, organised the continuation of the tales. The next tale was written by Dr Carr who had just published his history of Coldingham, and he took from this. They soon had to appoint an editor and writers from all over Scotland submitted tales to be published in what was becoming a popular and well known publication both nationally and internationally.

We don’t know the names of many of the original contributors, but from Leighton's latter smaller editions we do know of the following contributors: