Trees and near-linear stable sets

When $H$ is a forest, the Gyárfás-Sumner conjecture implies that every graph $G$ with no induced subgraph isomorphic to $H$ and with bounded clique number has a stable set of linear size. We cannot prove that, but we prove that every such graph $G$ has a stable set of size $|G|^{1-o(1)}$. If $H$ is not a forest, there need not be such a stable set. Second, we prove that when $H$ is a ``multibroom'', there {\em is} a stable set of linear size. As a consequence, we deduce that all multibrooms satisfy a ``fractional colouring'' version of the Gyárfás-Sumner conjecture. Finally, we discuss extensions of our results to the multicolour setting.