FROM Dumfries subtract Robert Burns (a difference that will be celebrated again this weekend) and who's left? The year-long song and dance around the poet's grave have made Dumfries seem a one-hero town in the way that other frontier settlements were one-horse.

Doonhamers (as the lieges are pleased to call themselves) must have got up to more in two centuries than the business of guarding Burns's bones. Around where they lie in St Michael's cluttered kirkyard nobody else will be quoted on Sunday. After a church service for the bicentenary of the poet's death, pilgrims from around the world will form a grand procession. Ten bands will accompany them. Out of respect, Dumfries will close some main streets.

Estimates of the likely turn-out have gone from a romantic 20,000 to a, still imaginative, 8000.

Burns spent his last eight years in Dumfries. Some of his best work was written there. He was prosperous enough. Long before he became famous the Doonhamers had recognised his worth. They befriended him.

Another local service he enjoyed (wrong word) was rotten medical advice. Dumfries doctoring did for him before his time. And an extended meal was made with his remains. Not once but twice did they bury him.

It took l9 years for a prominent place to be found at St Michael's under a shrine constructed along the lines of a seaside ice-cream kiosk.

Offhand, it is tough to think of other local heroes who belong in the same league as Burns. One legendary figure who does match him in town fame starred on a different, more down-to-earth field. His was a rougher artistry.

Because Dumfries is preparing itself for a parnassian Sunday, he may be out of place here. Perhaps we'll get to him later. My courage may improve. For going on with, let us keep this outing literary.

Persons of letters who took an unaccustomed path to Dumfries for Burns's sake chronicled varied impressions. Dorothy Wordsworth confided to her diary that the town had not been ready for Robert.

Lord Cockburn, circuit judge and gossip, liked Dumfries very much, although he was blowed if he knew why. About what John Keats made of the place it is hard to be sure. For a certainty, he did not appreciate its women. They offended him. Something to do with their feet it was. He found them unladylike and large.

Richard Ayton, an early nineteenth-century (English) travel writer, was well put off by the kirkyard of St Michael. ``On casting one's eye over this prompous burial-ground (he intoned) one might imagine that it was the chosen cemetery of the warriors and sages of the world, instead of the peaceful and plodding dealers of a provincial town.''

It is not easy to set aside his snootiness. Old Dumfries really packed in its dead. Burns's kiosk stands out like a neat deed in the jumble of stone furniture.

Dorothy Wordsworth found the streets too bustling. For her taste the Doonhamers were too intent on making money. She added: ``We could not think of little else but poor Burns moving about that unpoetic ground.''

Although the verdict of Lord Cockburn was favourable, he was hard pushed how to express it. He settled for saying that Dumfries had the cleanest windows in Scotland. At least, his commendation is clear. What John Keats meant when he wrote that he found the Doonhamers ``more inaminated than necessary'' only he may know.

Only some know where the nickname came from. In hard times, unemployed townspeople left the River Nith for the banks of Clyde. Their idea of a wild weekend was to toddle back down home. Calling them Doonhamers was a piece of Glesca cheek which Dumfries amiably adopted.

Actor John Laurie was a Doonhamer. J M Barrie dreamed up Peter Pan in a garden in Dumfries. In Dumfries was held the last public hanging in Scotland of a woman. Historian Thomas Carlyle was a nearly Doonhamer, being from Ecclefechan. Visiting a woman friend, he left behind a pair of canvas house slippers which are retained under glass at Dumfries Museum. (It is not explained why his hostess, a Miss Grierson, kept the shoes and failed to send them on.)

According to a factsheet of Dumfries and Galloway Tourist Board, an industrialist and bank director name of Patrick Millar is remembered for more reasons than how he rented to Robert Burns the clapped-out farm which hastened the poet's end. Banker Millar is credited with pioneering turnips in Scotland. The earliest imported seeds were a gift to him from King Gustav of Sweden - ``hence the name swede for turnips'' (it says on this piece of tourist paper).

But this helpful sheet misses the nameliest modern Doonhamer of all. He was bustling Billy Houliston of Queen of the South, the town's football club. Dumfries's main misfortune is to have composed the best of poetic names for its team only immediately to run out of creative achievement on the park. But Billy Houliston once helped Scotland beat the Saxons at Wembley.

And Doonhamers will tell you how they cuffed Celtic 4-1, with one goal by their Billy. As recently as l945 that was.

Brother Walfrid, who founded Celtic, is also buried in Dumfries, although not alongside Robert Burns. Just the same, Walfrid, Houliston, and Burns make a good enough front three for any place.