I have a question about historical memory in Tolkien, and I'm wondering a bit whether @BretDevereaux can answer it.
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So, that's actually exactly the kind of patchy knowledge I'd expect! Take a look at the sources we have, for instance, for the Middle/Late Roman Republic. For some years, we have Livy *and* Polybius, and we're really well informed! But in other years, the relevant sections...
...of Livy and Polybius are lost, and all we have are later summaries of their work. Often that means literally knowing, "An important battle at <place> happened in this year and <side> won." Sometimes we're left trying to sketch out the events of a decade from...
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...really disjointed biographies (esp. Plutarch) because while there *were* narrative sources for these important battles, they don't survive. And that's with a fairly complete reckoning of all of the material that made it out of the classical past.
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Faramir's situation is worse: maybe the information exists, but it's in Rivendell (a long way away) and it may be in a language that few in Gondor speak. Getting that information means sending someone all the way to Rivendell - hardly a safe journey, as we see!
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