MOVE over Eminem and The Streets. Yorkshire kids were rapping long before you came along.

In those days, the young MCs didn't wear nylon tracksuits and trainers, but gymslips and plimsolls. And it was more skip-hop than hip-hop.

The Diary's contention that the origins of rap can be found not in the crime-ridden ghettos of the south Bronx but in North Yorkshire schoolyards was confirmed by two correspondents this week.

Like Eminem, they chanted rhymes in public. But unlike the controversial star, they had to skip while doing so.

Mrs Marlene Ward, of Selby, writes with two of her favourite schoolyard skipping rhymes. The first, I Am A Girl Guide, dates from the 1940s, and it went like this:

I am a girl guide

Dressed in blue

These are the actions I must do

Salute to the king

And bow to the queen

And turn my back

To the wringing machine.

The second is called Getting Married:

What day shall I be married?

Monday, Tuesday... etc

What will I wear?

Silk, satin, muslin, rags

Who will I marry?

Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor

Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

What sort of shoes will you wear?

Boots, shoes, slippers, clogs

How will you get to church?

Coach, carriage, wheelbarrow, dust cart

Where will you live?

Big house, little house, pigsty, barn.

"At the end of the skipping game," writes Mrs Ward, "the girl had to recite where she had stopped.

"It was greeted usually with howls of laughter, eg: 'I will marry on Monday, wearing rags, marry a rich man, wearing shoes, went to church in a wheelbarrow, went to live in a barn'."

Miss Dorothy Wootton, of Strensall, also nominated the girl guide rhyme as one of her favourites. She remembers another one:

All in together girls

Never mind the weather girls

When it is your birthday

Please run out

January, February... etc

Miss Wootton adds: "Salt & Pepper was two ropes. One went one way and the other, the other way, and you skipped (or attempted to skip) as the ropes went progressively faster with the onlookers counting."

She has vivid memories of other playground games. "We played 5's (with small pebbles), and film stars - where one person faced the others and gave a star's initial. The one who guessed the name took over."

More school games later.

CHRIS Wood, of Portland Street, York, emails to reveal he has been discussing royal developments with his family.

"When, last week, I explained to my 13-year old son that Prince Charles was going to marry Camilla Parker Bowles, he replied 'WHAT? That woman out of Sex And The City'?"

Updated: 09:15 Wednesday, February 16, 2005