You need to iterate over your list, here is an example

public static void main(String[] args){
    List<LinkedHashMap<String,String>> list = new ArrayList<LinkedHashMap<String, String>>();

    LinkedHashMap<String, String> test = new LinkedHashMap<String, String>();
        test.put("a","1");
        test.put("b","2");

    list.add(test);

    for(Map<String, String> map : list){
        for(String key : map.keySet()){
            System.out.println("key: " + key + " value " + map.get(key));
        }
    }

}

No - you're storing them as a list, which isn't designed to be accessed by "key" - it doesn't have any notion of a key.

It sounds like really you want something like a Map<String, String> - assuming you only need to store a single value for each key.

If you're stuck with the ArrayList (and I'd at least change the parameter type to List, if not Iterable given that that's all you need) then what you've got is fine.

I don't understand why you are creating a List of maps. A Map will let you put several key value pairs. Here is a way that would work:

protected Map<String, String> yaml_parse(BufferedReader filename) throws IOException{
    String result;
    Map<String, String> map = new HashMap<String, String>();
    while ((result = filename.readLine()) != null) {
        //keyValue[0] = key, keyValue[1] = value
        String[] keyValue = result.split(": "); 
        map.put(keyValue[0], keyValue[1]);
    }

    return map;
}

And you would use it like this:

Map<String, String> map = yaml_parse("myFile.yaml");
String key1Value = map.get("key1"); //Stores key1's value into key1Value

I think you might be using the wrong data structure. From your question, it seems like you want a Map only, not a List of Maps.